Chard Harvest

 First things first: get your pot of boiling water ready, with an ice bath nearby, and a plethora of toweling to dry things off a bit, and a timer. Not shown is the colander for the ice bath, so that you're not fishing around in that pan trying to get your chard pieces out.

Then you get some energetic younger person to drag in 1000 tons of chard from the garden, and cover your table with it. Then you whine and wheedle them to separate it into bundles of a dozen stems each.

Next step is to admire its leafy beauty, because you grew the stuff in a raised planter box in your front yard. Then it is time to begin the processing.

Using your chef's knife (which you have sharpened to the point of being able to slice though your daughter's calendar edges on the wall) you run the edge of the knife down the back of each stem, separating the colorful center rib from the green leaf. When you have a stack of leaf halves, you curl them up to make a tight little log, and then cut thin strips, making adorable little pinwheels of green. Cut the pinwheels in half and put them in a prep bowl. Next, chop the ribs into bite-sized colorful pieces and put them in a separate bowl.

Blanch the greens for 1 minute, ice bath them for two. Blanch the rib bits for two minutes, ice bath them for three. Put them both on a cookie sheet and flash freeze them before packaging them for eating when the weather is too hot to have fresh chard.

When you can finally stand to even look at chard again, cut a white onion into halves, then cut THIN ribbons and saute them in a tablespoon or two each of butter and extra-virgin olive oil. Add the chard, and cook until tender. Add a bit of salt and some garlic powder, and at the very end, a few squirts or squeezes of lemon juice.

This will provide the impetus for planting chard again next fall. (Or early spring if you live in areas where the ground freezes.)