Swiss Chard

The weather turned cold and wintry today, leaving me with little desire to leave the premises, so I turned to OilMan's garden on the upper terrace. He has constructed covers over the raised beds which look from down below like pioneer wagons or "prairie schooners" as I have heard them called. It seems apt--one can almost picture them sailing through the grassy plains field as the wind billows out the covers like sails.

For the money and time that OilMan has spent constructing the covers, digging out the boxes, carting bags of soil up 25 or so steps and planting lettuce, we could probably fly to Mexico City for a Caesar salad (I actually think it was invented in Tiajuana) but he has more fun digging in the dirt, and I have grown tired of the ubiquitous Caesar salad anyway.

The latest trendy food is kale salad. Having had a terrible attack of appendicitis followed by an appendectomy after eating some burnt cremated inexpertly cooked kale 35 years ago, I have only recently rekindled an interest in cooking and eating it, mainly because it was flourishing in the garden when we moved in and continues to grow twice as fast as we can hope to eat it.But salad? I was skeptical.

Here in the land of foodie delights, the trendsetters are waxing eloquent over the deliciousness of the kale salad, but I put it in the same category as chili pepper flavored ice-cream--too weird. I finally broke down however, and had a kale salad with butternut squash at the Spinster Sisters because my daughter (who probably also suffered through the burnt version 30 years ago recommended it. I must admit it was excellent. I fear I have made this discovery just as the foodies are moving on to some new delight, (pork bellies? beet carpaccio? ) but perhaps I can order it one more time and try to figure out how to make it myself. Never tastes as good though....

For now, we'll be moving on to chard--one of the most beautiful vegetables in the garden.