So I may have promised weeks of content and here we are two weeks overdue and it hit me, because of course it hit me the week 45 of my 52 week project.
I didn’t have to follow a week by week guideline. Sure, that makes it a bit easier to follow and would make everything a bit more organized, but life isn’t like that is it?
It was also then that hit me that I should have been numbering the produce, not the weeks. Oh well, I’m giving this to y’all warts and all.
I will say that you may notice the pictures getting a bit worse because I am awful when it comes to shooting with a flash. I always try to make sure that I take pictures while the sun is out. It can’t be too bright either so its only for a short stretch of time. Daylight savings time coupled with a mainly day shift work schedule as of late has kind of messed with the posting. Also, it was just a rainy day.
Those are my excuses, I’m sticking to them and now lets get onto the chard, which is basically greens. The more recipes I looked up the more I realized they are just a different kind of green. They are actually a relative of beets and had that nice earthy (dirt) smell when I was cutting them up.
When shopping for them, you will notice that these are gorgeous full leaves and are actually gigantic. Kale was a sort of medium sized leaf and was so curled up on itself that it didn’t take too much space. Rainbow chard was slightly scrunched up and the stalk was as long as my arm.
This one picture doesn’t do any justice to the size of it especially since I was trying to balance a camera, something to try to soften the flash and keeping my hand stretched out by the thing. Under my hand is more stalk which is edible as well.
You have to separate the leaves from the stalk and chop them up. It took me a bit of practice before I could get the most out of each part but I insisted on doing it by hand and it wasn’t too bad looking.
Next part was fun though since you roll the leaves into a log shape and slice them to make nice little strips. I had fun just chopping through them. There is something nice to chopping leaves, I get the same joy from chopping lettuce which is the weirdest sentence I’ve written in a while.
The stalks are basically colorful bits of celery and you could really smell the beetroot coming out and one of the red ones actually stained the board just a little bit. I’m just going to say that preparing rainbow chard was a pleasant experience since the weather has been getting colder and chopping something that smells so fresh and earthy makes me feel rustic.
I meant to say also that basically every recipe I found for rainbow chard was garlic, lemon and olive oil. You cook the stalks first with the garlic because the leaves reduce a ton just like spinach.
I’ve never been too huge on greens because they just weren’t something I ever wanted, but I was almost developing a slight craving while cooking which I feel like is a good sign.
Not bad.
I feel like you have to specifically be craving greens to go to town on these. The wild thing is they definitely had a beet taste to them which was awesome and made me want beets again. I think a splash of vinegar would have been better than the lemon you mix it with but that’s just my vinegary taste buds talking.
I wanted to keep this simple, and I am sticking to it. I only have nine more things to try and I can finally say I completed a New Years Resolution. We’re heading back into cold weather which is where we began so the search is on, but I am still excited to share it with y’all. Thanks for hanging around so far!
Try 52 