Chard salads

Last night I harvested the first batch of chard.  It's all pretty much ready to be picked, but I since I know we can't eat it all right now, I'm leaving it in the garden for as long as I can.  We have been blessed with some ridiculously amazing weather right now - highs during the day in the low 70s, lows in the mid to low 50s over night.  It's the perfect weather for crops like lettuce, spinach, and chard, and some of the smaller romaine and spinach plants that I thought were shot because of the heat are suddenly flourishing.  I love it!

Anyway, I think that chard will go into the record books as my favorite garden vegetable of 2010.  Look at how beautiful it is.

Chard is a large green leaf, oftentimes with a reddish stalk (my stalks happen to be white.)  It can be eaten raw in salads or steams or cooked like you might do with spinach.  I'm not really into the slimy consistency that I think of when I think of cooks greens, so I'm going to stick with raw chard for now. 

It's a slightly thicker leave than spinach and much thicker than regular leaf lettuce.

The true test?  I made salads for DH and his brother the other night and didn't tell them.  They'd been eating mostly spinach salads, but I'd heard that chard was slightly more bitter (although when I tasted it while washing it, I didn't think it tasted bitter.)

After dinner I said, "So, how were the salads?"  And they both said, "Umm.. good. Why?"  Because, you know, I don't usually ask about the salads at dinner.  Both were surprised to hear that they were chard salads and I was thrilled to hear that!  Otherwise, 1/6th of my garden would be a total loss.  And instead, we will be eating chard salads until we can't stand it anymore.

Organic, totally natural, on the anti-cancer diet list, AND it tastes good.  There is hope after all!