Another weird veggie I'd never cooked: Chard with White Wine and Garlic

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Contrary to what you might think from reading this blog, I do in fact eat healthy foods.  Real foods, like meats and veggies and fresh, non-baked-in-sugar-and-butter fruits.  It's true, I swear!  The problem is, anything interesting enough to share is usually cooked for dinner... at night... (so please excuse the bad pics in this post) but I promise I do eat, and enjoy, healthy foodstuffs. 

Take, for example, this beautiful chard that came in our organics box last week.  Isn't it pretty?  And, amazingly, my tastebuds finally grew up about a year ago and decided they liked chard!  Especially when it's cooked in lots of butter and cheese, but that's neither here nor there. 

This recipe actually doesn't involve a lot of butter, just a wee knob (teehee, wee knob, I'm so 5 years old) and some olive oil and white wine, with a little garlic and lemon juice and a handful of fresh parmesan cheese thrown in.

It was delicious, and relatively easy (once the bf spent 20 minutes cleaning and de-ribbing and chopping the chard for me), and pretty healthy to boot!  We made it as a side dish for a stuffed pork shoulder the bf picked up from the grocery store – it was a lotta meat, with a lotta stuffing, and we needed something clean and fresh to balance it out.  And besides, it came in our box and we didn't want it to go off!

It didn't, however, photograph super well... so sorry for that...

And then for dessert (you didn't think I would forget about dessert, did you?), we had another healthy dish: baked peaches with cinnamon and a touch of honey.  These peaches were actually good enough to eat raw, but as I seem to be getting progressively more allergic to more and more fresh fruits and veggies every year (and you wonder why I love butter and flour so much), I figured it was safer to cook them.

They came out perfectly: sweet, with a hint of spice from the cinnamon, and soft without being mushy.  They were delicious warm that night, with or without a scoop of lemon yogurt, and they were just as tasty the next day, cold from the fridge.  Not too shabby for a dish that took fifteen minutes and almost no effort to put together.

All in all, it was a pretty successful dinner.  And, thanks to our good friends at Reynolds Wrap (yes, we cart it back from the states in our suitcases), it was even low on dish mess!  Now that's my kinda meal.

Garlic and White Wine Chard

     barely adapted from Allrecipes

Wash a small bunch of Swiss chard, then cut out the stems and center ribs and chop them up together, chopping the leaves coarsely in a separate pile.

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt:

     1 small knob butter

     1 medium-sized glug olive oil

Add and cook for 30 seconds (until fragrant):

     1 heaping tbsp minced garlic

     1/2 small red onion, diced

Add the chard stems and simmer along with:

     1/2 cup dry white wine

When the stems have begun to soften (about 5 minutes unless you told your bf they didn't need to be cut up small, in which case it'll be more like 15), stir in the leaves and cook until wilted.

Stir in:

     1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste

     2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

     

Season with salt to taste and serve.

Baked Peaches with Cinnamon

Heat the oven to 350F/175C and line a baking tray with foil.  Slice in half and de-pit as many peaches as you have / want to cook.  Place the peach halves skin-down on the tray and sprinkle with cinnamon (and a little brown sugar would be tasty here).  Drizzle with honey (probably not on top of b.sug, though).

Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, until peaches are soft but not mushy (a fork is a good tester).  Eat plain or with some yogurt or ice cream of your choice (the lemon went really well).