My green chard experience.

The other day, we participated in the Bountiful Baskets food co-op for the first time, and were delighted what we had in our box!  Delicious strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, apples, a pineapple, zucchini, tomatoes, a yellow bell pepper, broccoli, lettuce, and……green chard.  Huh?  Green what?  What was I supposed to do with this?  I read that it was kind of like spinach, which I like.  I found a recipe for cooking green chard  (well, it was called Swiss chard in the recipe…I’m still unclear about all of these different kinds of chard when I didn’t even know one kind ever existed…)  Anyway, you can find the recipe here -> Swiss Chard recipe.  

So here’s how my first experience with green chard went:

 

Step one:  Wash the chard and cut the tough ends off.  The recipe said 1/3 of the stalk, but if I did it over, I would chop the whole stalk off because I don’t like stalk.  Just like I don’t like broccoli stalk.

 

Step two:  Put some olive oil and garlic in a pan.  (The recipe said to add some dried crushed red pepper, but I didn’t have any.)  Add the chard.

 

Step three:  Saute’ chard and cover for about five-ten minutes.

Step four:  Turn over leaves and cook for another five minutes.

 

Step five: Eat the chard.

You see I burnt a few leaves, but they were still tasty.  My hubby said it tasted like spinach, and all he wanted was one bite because he’s not a spinach fan.  Baby D liked to play with it, but wouldn’t take a bite.  The Captain would even look at the stuff, hardly, let alone put it anywhere near his mouth.  So I was left to eat it all, but I didn’t eat it all.  I ate all that I could.  It wasn’t BAD, but it definitely wasn’t something I’d request again.  It had sort of a buttery taste, and the garlic really complimented it.  

One of our friends said we could use it in a salad like spinach.  I think that if we do get chard in our box again, that’ll be the way to go.

Thanks for reading about my experiment in chard!