We joined a CSA, which is kind of like sharecropping in reverse. We pay folks and they grow stuff and give us some. One thing they’ve been giving us lately is chard.

Now, I haven’t had a lot of contact with chard up to now. If it weren’t free, I wouldn’t be eating it now, and I’ll tell you why: it smells like beets. That isn’t surprising, since they’re in the same family, along with spinach. But you know what? I really really like it. I love spinach, hate beets, and really really like chard.

It’s pretty, too. The leaves are green and the spines are yellow or red. Look at that: Isn’t that pretty?

You can use the leafy bits in salad. In fact, I like to cut the spines into the salad, too.

And you can hold your nose and ignore the nasty beet smell and cut the chard up into salted water, add some garlic and olive oil and onion and cook it until it’s tender. Tastes like spinach, only milder. Mom doesn’t like it much; she says it doesn’t have much flavor. I think it DOES, and I likes it, precious!

Imma try making chard chips: tossing the leaves in salted oil and cooking it at 450 for 10 minutes.

One of these days, I may even try beets again.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character likes one sibling, hates another and really, really likes another. Could be the character’s siblings or not.

MA