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.)

Ah, another beautiful, warm sunny January day!

Remember last January when I was complaining about fog and damp and cold? Go back in time and tell me to shut the hell up, would you? We are in such desperate need of rain it isn't at all funny.

This is chard in the front planter box, big and tough. I want to do something with it so it has an excuse to put out some sweet tender leaves -- these fiends are thick and tough. I stuck one in the vegetable drawer in the fridge, and it appears to have dehydrated, and looks like it's longing to be made into some kind of fake sushi. But never having eaten sushi, I don't know what flavors one might savor. I do have some frozen catfish nuggets left ...

But today's sweet triumph was (once again) reclaiming my studio. Several sanding projects done in there coated everything in a layer of brownish wood dust. Everything. Yuck. And then this past week, all the recycle stuff got set down out there, too. 'Twas a dump. A good two hours of cleaning, sorting, and putting away left me once again with an inviting haven, and I did some art work on my table-top project (not unveiled yet, except to Lillian) and some scribble-art, which can be seen over at the Resolution Blog. It was fun, and deliciously, just that little bit of mind-->hand work made me itch for the smell of oil paints.

And oh, Lord, help me, Bernie and I took a whack at a Pilates "Beginning Mat Work" video this morning. I was appalled at how flabby, stiff, and weak I've become. It was so difficult for me that I wanted to go back to bed afterwards. It was so humiliating that I know I must persevere and limber and strengthen up.

Humiliation, dirt, art, dreadful warm and balmy weather. Now that's the way to spend a day in January!