Winter Chard

 Chard is the most amazing plant. Rain, hail or shine it just carries on growing, I cut it for supper and back it grows a fortnight or so later. I keep perhaps 12- 14 plants up the garden and have been dining off them and sharing them since the summer. I know from experience that they will go 2 or 3 years before bolting but even then they give plenty of warning so one can sow new plants. It has a mellower flavour than kale (which I also love) and cooks crispier than spinach (well, my cooking!)

Yesterday morning was frosty so I crunched up the garden to cut the chard; I think there is something fine about crunching through a winter morning to gather my dinner! It is the cave-woman in me!

As I was whizzing together leftovers for soup this evening I thought of an old joke of my Dad's. As children whenever Mum served a collection of leftovers Dad used to tell us it was 'Muzgo' for supper. I thought this meant that we were having a really exciting and exotic meal, maybe even from Russia (Muzgo- Moscow?!), and our mother was such a good cook that just about everything tasted good, even 'Muzgo'. I don't even recall being particularly disappointed when I finally discovered the truth! 

Unfortunately this trick did not work on my own children since my culinary skills are erratic at best, so leftovers were/ are whizzed together to make 'Stoup', a cross between stew and soup, unpredictable but better than nothing!

So today's chard went into the combination of leftovers to make 'Stoup', but I still prefer Dad's 'Muzgo'.

Today's soundtrack was an Emergence Magazine podcast, Desire Paths by David Farrier, which I listened to twice. It is about different ways of walking and seeing since the pandemic has left him the time to avoid going in straight lines all the time. His thoughts were interesting and I posted a few lines on my Instagram Heckety Blue.