It's Monday, and today, I decided to pick that gorgeous Swiss chard plant and try it out for the first time, and may I say, it was delicious! I didn't have any fresh garlic, but I used the minced garlic in a jar and it came out really good.
I had read some articles about it earlier and they said to simply cut the stems off first and cook them a little longer. So, I cut them up like you would cut celery for a salad, and I chopped up the soft leaves and it was done in about 15 minutes.
I don't even remember what I did before I learned the simple way to cook any vegetable. Maybe that's why I never really cared for vegetables in the past; I was cooking them all wrong. Nowadays, I simply use olive oil, salt and pepper. Maybe I will throw in some garlic, a few herbs here and there, but mostly, I stick with the basics.
When I say "some garlic", I mean a ton of garlic.
Anyway, the Swiss Chard was good. I initially grew it because I had tried juicing it and it had such a nice mild flavor, I had to see how it was to grow.
Growing it was quite easy. It was a little slow to germinate, and was very slow to grow through May and June. I think the first big leaves started showing up in mid July. One thing about the chard that impressed me, was how as my kale was being slaughtered by cabbage worms, the chard was practically untouched. I decided, that I needed more of this in my life.
In the beginning of August, I planted a few trays of it, because I heard P. Allen Smith talk about how well it grows in the winter and how gorgeous of a plant it is in fall. My seeds did not do very well in terms of germination rates, but now I have 10 plants in the ground and that should be plenty.
Now I just have to work on my preparation of it, to try and get the kids to eat it!
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