Chard
26/10/12 05:16
The rain that turned to snow on Wednesday marked the end of the gardening season here in Rapid City. We had already ended our gardening earlier when a heavy frost came. We picked all of the remaining tomatoes and allowed them to ripen indoors. I left the sunflowers as natural bird feeders, but tilled up the rest of the garden. Others, however, diligently covered their crops at the first frost and continued to grow the hardy fall plants until the first snowfall. Wednesday, however, pretty much brought an end to the 2012 gardening season in Rapid City.
One of the members of our church, cleaning out his garden on Wednesday, brought us a large bunch of Chard and a bundle of sage. We’ll dry the sage and use it throughout the winter, but Chard is best when it is consumed quickly. I’ve never grown Chard in our garden, but I suspect that it is easy enough to grow. It looks like a bit of a cross between spinach and beets. Like spinach, chard is grown for its stalk and leaves and not for its roots, like beets. It is often called Swiss Chard around here.
I think chard would make fine salad greens, but I decided to cook about half of the bundle we received for supper last night. I cut out all of the stems, chopped them up and sautéed them in butter along with a small red onion and a bit of garlic. When the stems were tender, I folded in the leaves and cooked just until they wilted. Then I added a bit of salt, lemon juice and Parmesan cheese. It made a great side dish to go with meatloaf for dinner. There is a small portion left that will be good for lunch today.
As summer slides into fall, we start to really appreciate the last bits of fresh garden vegetables. Things aren’t at all like they were for our grandparents’ generation or even our parents’. We have access to all the fresh fruits and vegetables we want in the grocery store every day. In our local store, apples are sold year round. Sometime in late August or early September the current year’s crop begins to show up, but they have ways of storing apples so that they will be selling the end of this year’s crop all the way until July or August of next year. Citrus definitely has seasons when it is better than others, but it is available nearly year round. Garden vegetables are all available throughout the year. The trucks that haul them from southern climates are kept busy by our appetites.
As I said, that wasn’t the case for previous generations. When I was a child, we always got a really nice orange in our Christmas stocking. It was a nod to a tradition that began just after the Great Depression in our parents’ homes. Oranges from Florida became available around Christmas Time in their hometowns if one met the right train bearing the fruit for sale. This practice was suspended during the war, but resumed in our childhood. As we grew up, oranges, grapefruit and other citrus became more and more available. These days, I expect to be able to buy lemons year round and we eat oranges or grapefruit almost every day.
In days past, the vegetables that were available during the winter were those that had been canned. Cucumbers became pickles. Some of the beats were pickled and others just canned. Peas and beans filled rows and rows of jars in the cellar. By the time we came along, fresh vegetables were not always available, but there was a huge variety of commercially canned vegetables. “From the valley of the (Ho! Ho! Ho!) Green Giant” was the jingle on the radio and television and our basement was filled with cases of canned goods that were prepared for nearly every meal. I don’t mind canned vegetables, but we rarely eat them these days because we have the luxury of plenty of fresh vegetables at our store. We consume most of our garden crops as they are grown and dry and freeze a few things. We haven’t gotten out the jars and canned things for ourselves since a member who asked us if we could use a few cucumbers came by with bags of them and we ended up with a dozen jars of pickles. We haven’t totally lost the skills of preceding generations, but we don’t exercise them much.
The crop that our parents most remembered from the hard days of the thirties is potatoes. They could grow large amounts of the tubers and filled their cellars with them. Then they proceeded to eat them. Our grandparents often ate potatoes three meals a day. Baked, fried, or mashed, and then re-fried as hash browns or potato patties for breakfast the next day. The cellars were cool and the potatoes kept pretty well, but as the winter stretched on and turned to spring, those old potatoes got pretty bad. Susan and I both remember the ritual of the first supper of creamed peas and new potatoes to celebrate the return of fresh. I don’t remember ever being served stale food, but I know that the memory of old potatoes was ingrained into my father’s memory.
But I do remember canned spinach. Whoever thought that was a good idea just wasn’t thinking. Popeye aside, I could barely get that stuff down. It was over-cooked and slimy. We grew up eating what was served and my mom worked hard to prepare food from the things that were in the freezer and pantry. Someone thought that buying few cans of spinach was a good idea. I suspect it was my father, who couldn’t resist a bargain. If the store marked down anything enough, he’d buy a case. At any rate, I grew up being able to imitate Popeye’s words: “I’m strong to the finish, ‘cause I eat my spinach.” I never shared his gusto for the canned stuff, though. I endured it.
I grew up thinking that I didn’t like spinach or chard or beet greens or anything that looked like that. What I discovered is that I don’t like canned spinach. That sautéed chard last night was a real treat!
By the end of this weekend, there won’t be enough chard left in our house to have any of it canned.
One of the members of our church, cleaning out his garden on Wednesday, brought us a large bunch of Chard and a bundle of sage. We’ll dry the sage and use it throughout the winter, but Chard is best when it is consumed quickly. I’ve never grown Chard in our garden, but I suspect that it is easy enough to grow. It looks like a bit of a cross between spinach and beets. Like spinach, chard is grown for its stalk and leaves and not for its roots, like beets. It is often called Swiss Chard around here.
I think chard would make fine salad greens, but I decided to cook about half of the bundle we received for supper last night. I cut out all of the stems, chopped them up and sautéed them in butter along with a small red onion and a bit of garlic. When the stems were tender, I folded in the leaves and cooked just until they wilted. Then I added a bit of salt, lemon juice and Parmesan cheese. It made a great side dish to go with meatloaf for dinner. There is a small portion left that will be good for lunch today.
As summer slides into fall, we start to really appreciate the last bits of fresh garden vegetables. Things aren’t at all like they were for our grandparents’ generation or even our parents’. We have access to all the fresh fruits and vegetables we want in the grocery store every day. In our local store, apples are sold year round. Sometime in late August or early September the current year’s crop begins to show up, but they have ways of storing apples so that they will be selling the end of this year’s crop all the way until July or August of next year. Citrus definitely has seasons when it is better than others, but it is available nearly year round. Garden vegetables are all available throughout the year. The trucks that haul them from southern climates are kept busy by our appetites.
As I said, that wasn’t the case for previous generations. When I was a child, we always got a really nice orange in our Christmas stocking. It was a nod to a tradition that began just after the Great Depression in our parents’ homes. Oranges from Florida became available around Christmas Time in their hometowns if one met the right train bearing the fruit for sale. This practice was suspended during the war, but resumed in our childhood. As we grew up, oranges, grapefruit and other citrus became more and more available. These days, I expect to be able to buy lemons year round and we eat oranges or grapefruit almost every day.
In days past, the vegetables that were available during the winter were those that had been canned. Cucumbers became pickles. Some of the beats were pickled and others just canned. Peas and beans filled rows and rows of jars in the cellar. By the time we came along, fresh vegetables were not always available, but there was a huge variety of commercially canned vegetables. “From the valley of the (Ho! Ho! Ho!) Green Giant” was the jingle on the radio and television and our basement was filled with cases of canned goods that were prepared for nearly every meal. I don’t mind canned vegetables, but we rarely eat them these days because we have the luxury of plenty of fresh vegetables at our store. We consume most of our garden crops as they are grown and dry and freeze a few things. We haven’t gotten out the jars and canned things for ourselves since a member who asked us if we could use a few cucumbers came by with bags of them and we ended up with a dozen jars of pickles. We haven’t totally lost the skills of preceding generations, but we don’t exercise them much.
The crop that our parents most remembered from the hard days of the thirties is potatoes. They could grow large amounts of the tubers and filled their cellars with them. Then they proceeded to eat them. Our grandparents often ate potatoes three meals a day. Baked, fried, or mashed, and then re-fried as hash browns or potato patties for breakfast the next day. The cellars were cool and the potatoes kept pretty well, but as the winter stretched on and turned to spring, those old potatoes got pretty bad. Susan and I both remember the ritual of the first supper of creamed peas and new potatoes to celebrate the return of fresh. I don’t remember ever being served stale food, but I know that the memory of old potatoes was ingrained into my father’s memory.
But I do remember canned spinach. Whoever thought that was a good idea just wasn’t thinking. Popeye aside, I could barely get that stuff down. It was over-cooked and slimy. We grew up eating what was served and my mom worked hard to prepare food from the things that were in the freezer and pantry. Someone thought that buying few cans of spinach was a good idea. I suspect it was my father, who couldn’t resist a bargain. If the store marked down anything enough, he’d buy a case. At any rate, I grew up being able to imitate Popeye’s words: “I’m strong to the finish, ‘cause I eat my spinach.” I never shared his gusto for the canned stuff, though. I endured it.
I grew up thinking that I didn’t like spinach or chard or beet greens or anything that looked like that. What I discovered is that I don’t like canned spinach. That sautéed chard last night was a real treat!
By the end of this weekend, there won’t be enough chard left in our house to have any of it canned.