Hey guys! Many of you know that I am passionate about real food and nutrition that makes sense but did you also know I also love to garden? I find digging in the dirt to be kind of therapeutic. As I garden, I always think of my grandma who let me pull up the beets from their rows and who also scolded me with a sly smile as we shelled peas together on the back porch. She would say, “We won’t have enough for supper if you keep eating all the peas.”
Gardening connects me with my grandmother and it connects me with the earth but, I didn’t say I was good at it LOL! I’ve planted my raised beds each spring season for several years now and sometimes we get a pretty decent crop of cherry & Roma tomatoes, lemon cucumbers and zucchini. But many seasons… well let’s just say it’s a good thing we don’t have to rely on my gardening skills to feed our family.
However, this year I planted a fall & winter garden and I have to say I am pretty excited! It’s actually growing and the Swiss chard is just beautiful! Admittedly, chard has never been one of my favorite vegetables but when you grow anything yourself it tastes a little bit better.
Chard is a super food that strengthens the immune system, supports healthy blood sugar levels, provides nutrients to generate and balance hormones and it adds fiber to our diet for colon health. It contains vitamin C and fat-soluble vitamins A & K. It also contains magnesium, potassium and iron.
But chard, like many green vegetables also contains anti-nutrients in the form of oxalates. Oxalates bind with minerals preventing them from being absorbed through the intestinal wall. If we are unable to absorb these important nutrients we become deficient. These deficiencies can lead to a number of health problems over time. Oxalates can also be damaging to the gut lining and they interfere with digestion and growth of the immune cells that are predominantly located in the intestines.
But there is good news, Grandma had a trick that “fixed” the oxalates while it also mellowed the sometimes-bitter flavor of chard. She boiled it! Boiling chard, kale, collards and other greens for as little as one minute neutralizes the oxalates making their nutrients more bio-available and easier for our bodies to utilize them.
Grandma’s Recipe was simple:
Ingredients
- 1 Bunch of Swiss or Rainbow Chard
- Red Wine Vinegar
- Sea Salt & Pepper
Instructions
- Roughly chop the leaves and the stems if they are tender. If the stems are tough, as they often are with kale, discard them.
- Bring a large pot of water with 1 tsp of sea salt to a full rolling boil. Add the leaves to the pot for 3 to 4 minutes.
- Strain leaves from the water and serve with a dash of red wine vinegar and salt & pepper to taste.
I don’t know if grandma new to boil the greens to remove the oxalates or not but she did know how to make chard and other greens taste good!
I hope you too have had the opportunity to learn from grandparents. They have such amazing stories as well as tips & tricks to share but most of all, they have a way of creating the best memories.
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