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.)

Happy New Year! And Food! And Dog!

Bernie's grand experiment this past fall was to attempt to grow Brussels sprouts in pots in our front yard farm. I'd given it a half-hearted try the previous year, but planted them too late -- I got to eat some of the foliage, but they never made those cute little mini-cabbage shapes. Bernie has had much more success.

Today he decided that some of them were big enough to eat. So we cooked them in bacon fryings with diced onion. Melt the bacon fat, add the onions, let them sweat down a little, then put in the halved Brussels sprouts, stirring gently now and then. When the color is bright green, cover them and let them steam themselves for a few minutes. Then flavor with salt and garlic powder, stir and steam again. They're done when a fork can penetrate them tenderly.

Holy smoley, they were delicious! Of course, as with just about all food, the sweet intensity of the flavor was so much better coming out of the garden minutes before. Yes, fresh is better than produce that sits in bins for days or weeks.

I love how they look like little knobby palm trees, and based on our culinary experience today, Bernie says he wants to plant a lot more of them next fall. I agree. More Brussels sprouts, more red-leaf lettuce, less spinach and chard and collards.

Yes, of course I have a picture of Kermit on his office chair near the table where I work. When I picked up the camera, he looked at me as though he expected to be photographed. He was very proud of himself today: he helped me unload the throw rugs from the dryer, every one of them. He's a working dog.

2017 is coming in with a deluge. I even heard a rumor that some of the reservoirs are going to fill to pre-drought levels. I certainly hope so, but I'll believe it when I see it. In the mean time, we have tentative plans to visit a somewhat flooded soccer field on Monday -- we're supposed to get a whopper of a rain over the weekend. Kermit is going to love it...

New Light

Glowing like they were lit from within, the corn stalks are nearly as beautiful now as they were when they were growing and green.

That's what I see when I get up in the morning; the light is already so different from high summer and slants in a different direction. Hitting the dried corn stalks, the sun highlights them against the dark shade of the other patio outside the kitchen door.

All too soon, I'll be removing my corn from the containers and planting a winter crop. What shall it be? Snow peas? Spinach? Some beet greens mixed in with some winter-blooming stock or Icelandic poppies? I'd love to grow some nice big purple cabbages, but I'd no sooner get them in than the damned ants will have planted aphids on them.

Got to do something about the ants, I remind myself.

I'm getting itchy for creative work again, which is very good. After the debilitating fall I took earlier this summer, and the sapping effort we had to make for the excellent new brick patio, I'm feeling an urge to make, to do, to try new things, to tap some of the ideas bouncing off the inside of my skull like autumn flies against screens and windowpanes.

Oh, wait. Chard. "Bright Lights" variety. Tastes great in stir-fries and soups, looks beautiful. With white pansies around the outside -- the pansies' petals are edible, too, albeit a bit peppery -- it will look gorgeous, and waking up on winter mornings will be a delight, too.

And just as an aside, I think that blogging once a month is reprehensible. I'll be back soon. Er.