The Fink Farm Dirt

Swiss chard are the only vegetables that have the same color P-O-W as flowers. I just love the brilliance of red chard. Our chard was a slow starter. While the cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts jumped up from the ground, the chard barely grew for the longest time.  Now we're nearing harvest and the question is what can we do with it? I get stymied about how to fix it. I just found a wonderful sounding "New York Times Cooking" recipe for Swiss Chard Slab Pie. Essentially, it's two layers of dough with a chard, onion, white wine and sour cream layer between.  The edges are crimped, the top slitted and washed with egg whites, then baked for 50 to 55 minutes.

We're city girls.  We'll admit it. We've progressed beyond bagging our Brussels sprouts from the bin at the local chain grocery store. We've been to the local farmers market. We know Brussels sprouts grow on a long stalk. And that's what we expected when we planted them last November.

We've had a couple of glorious weeks of sunshine that caused the cauliflowers to race right into the bolting stage. They've all been harvested and eaten.  We're just waiting for some spare time to take out the leaves and stems to make room for something new in the garden. Karen and I have slightly different perspectives on what to plant: she likes novelty -- rainbow or watermelon radishes or purple or gold cauliflower; I'm more of a traditionalist; the novelty varieties never seem to turn out as well as the originals.