Eat Your Greens: Swiss Chard

We have had a very successful gardening season so far. In February we planted lettuce, spinach, arugula, and Swiss chard. Swiss Chard has become my favorite vegetable I've decided. It comes in many different colors and varieties. I love the plant because it looks so pretty with it's yellow, red, or green stems in your garden. But I have also learned to appreciate it as a foodsource. You can cook it easily and in many different combinations. Freshly harvested from the garden it is just amazing! If you don't have your own garden or forgot to plant it, try and find it at a natural grocery store or farmers market.

This is one very simple way to cook it:

1. wash and rinse leaves well in the kitchen sink, set wet leaves aside


2. separate the thick stems from the leaves to cook first


3. set wet leaves and stems aside, don't dry them because you will need the moisture for steaming!


4. chop the leaves into smaller, bite sized pieces


5. peel 2 cloves of garlic and cut it into fine slivers


6. heat some olive in a big pan with a lid


7. add your stems to the pot and steam for a 2-3minutes, then add the leaves


8. put lid on top and steam for about 5 more minutes

Once the vegetables are all wilted and soft they are ready for eating! If you like things a little spicy, you can throw a couple of hot pepper flakes into the oil before you start the steaming process.

This is so easy to do. And my children who are not great fans of this sort of thing have learned to appreciate the greens from our garden. They sure love to pick the vegetables and get more excited about eating something that they grew themselves. You can cook spinach the same way!

I have also added vegetables prepared in this way to pasta and added some pesto. My kids love pesto. The green of the pesto masks the other greens. Without knowing that they were eating their greens they gobbled them all up and said it was so delicious.