Of chard and cappuccino

By popular demand, last night I carefully documented the process of chopping and cooking the rainbow chard I received this week. “But PastaQueen,” you might say. “Those don’t look like your hands.” And I would say, “You think I don’t know the back of my hands like the back of my hand?” But I would also agree that, yes, those are not my hands. After feeling somewhat intimidated by staring at the chard on the bottom shelf of my fridge for several days, I decided to hand this project off to an expert, namely my mother.

As my mother commented last night, she has greatly neglected my culinary education. She grew up in a small town in southern Indiana where they had a vegetable garden in the back yard. Eventually her parents bought their own farm and the vegetable patch grew to be larger than the house. Because of this, she came to be very experienced in the art of washing and properly chopping vegetables, not to mention canning, peeling, and other lost art forms. So I gave her the chard and she worked her magic, following the instructions my kind readers left in the comments of the chard entry. She chopped it up and then sautéed it in olive oil and garlic, tossing the thick ends in first to be cooked longer.

The final result was rather tasty, however I didn’t think it was all that different from the bok choy I tried earlier in the year. The chard itself acted mostly as a delivery device for the oil and garlic. The leafy greens provided some flavor, but mostly provided texture and bulk. I don’t think one leafy green is all that different from another leafy green in most cases.

My mother also brought over this from her kitchen:

Yes, dear readers, the General Mills International Coffees Orange Cappuccino is back! It’s changed its name to Orange Café, but as the label says, it’s the same recipe. I posted last year about my mother’s despair when the coffee was discontinued. A few commenters let me know that the coffee was coming back, and one even spotted it at a Target two weeks ago. The coffee has finally made its way to Indianapolis, and my mother is happily sipping her favorite drink in the mornings again.