This sounds yummy! Mmmmm........ I have been trying to grow swiss chard but someting keeps eating them up soo quickly! I think I'll plant more this weekend, cause this sounds soo good to make with my eggplants & fresh tomatoes & basil! Thanks for posting!

yummm. Thanks, ppod.
We must be in a similar climate, TT. I have all of those good things here too!

I had the same problem with my chard. The ones that I have now were pretty much eaten to the ground, but I put a net over them and kept watering and they have made it to a decent size, after s rocky start.

j.

Sounds great ppod. I have lots of all the veggies called for in the recipe and am glad to have a new way to use it. Sounds yummy.

I, too, have had something(s) chewing up my chard. Today I picked it all back to only a few tiny leaves while looking for the culprits. There were two types of caterpillers that I found alot of...a green kind and a brownish kind. I did alot of squishing. Hopefully that will help. Add in some freezing nights and maybe I'll get hole free chard again.

My husband is a diabetic on low-carb diet. We recently made a lasagna without pasta using veggies from our garden which included, grated carrots, yellow squash, etc. It was great!

We use the chard to make rollups, too. Mix ground meat and whatever you like and then roll up in a chard leaf and saute in a sauce of your choice.

Our chard has lasted all summer and it huge right now. We have harvested all along and it is unbelievable how it comes back is no time. We plan to harvest all of it tomorrow and prepare it to use as cooked spinach and freeze for soups, etc. this Winter. Hopefully, we will get another cutting before it freezes here.

Had never heard of it before I received it as a bonus in a swap. Our zone is too warm for spinach...I will definitely be growing it again next year!

Peggy

We discovered chard last year. It is like spinach, but tastes better, is more prolific, and bears from mid-summer until well after frost. We usually have it with sausage over pasta or potatoes.

We also cook it into the lasagna. (Lasagna is my favorite meal.) We recently found a way to take lasagna to a whole new level. Home-made ricotta. We got a 30-minute mozzarella kit and one of the recipes in the kit is for home-made ricotta. Great stuff, that.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ricotta making kit

Pseudachris, I found this Ricotta recipe on a foodie's blog. Does it look familiar?

How to Make Ricotta Cheese

1 gallon of whole milk
1 quart of buttermilk
cheesecloth
a rubberband

- Fold rinsed cheesecloth into layers and use it to line a colander or sieve in the sink.

- Pour the milks into a large Stainless Steel, Glass, or Ceramic saucepan. Don't use aluminium or copper which will react to the acids in the milk.

- At this point I like to attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan, it will come in handy later in the proceedings.

- Put the pan over high heat and stir with a rubber spatula, scraping the bottom of the pan to make sure the milk doesn't burn.

- Once is the milk is warm, stop stirring and continue to heat.

- You will start to see lumps forming in the milk - these are the curds. Once the temperature reaches between 175 and 180 F, the curds and whey will separate. At that point remove your pan from the heat.

- Using an Asian Skimmer or other large flat ladle with holes, very gently transfer the curds to the lined sieve and leave them to drain.

- Once the draining has slowed to a drip, carefully gather the edges of the cloth around the cheese and secure with a rubberband, into a bag shape which can be hung from your faucet or tap.

- Drain further until the cheese cools down and dripping completely comes to a halt.

- Remove from the cheese from the cloth and refrigerate. For absolute freshness, consume as quickly as possible.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beck's Posh Nosh Blog

Apologies for not getting back much sooner and thanking you all for your friendly and encouraging comments. Pseudacris, thanks for the link and suggestion that we can make delicious ricotta ourselves. Never thought of it. Peggy, thanks for your great ideas for culinary uses of chard. And Jill, thanks so much for posting the Ricotta recipe. I just have to try it out.

Sorry about the problems that some of you have had with caterpillars, and other critters, eating your chard. Has any of you tried floating row covers? I was thinking of using them next year on other greens, which were chewed pretty well by caterpillars but don't know how complicated they are to set up and maintain.

Two plants of the chard varieties that I grew this year, "Lucullus" and "Large Ribbed" (Sandhill), produced fantastic chard: Large white ribs with huge, thick savoyed leaves with a taste that is much superior to the other chard plants. Unfortunately, I've lost track of which variety turned out to be the superior one. Anyway, it'll be easy enough to grow out two chard varieties next year and find out.

One lesson learned. Chard needs space, at least one foot between plants, maybe two. Chard tolerates part (dappled) shade very well (in my climate). In fact their leaves go limp during direct afternoon sun. Chard is very ornamental. My two great-looking chards can be seen from the kitchen window (@ the sink), and looking at them, while working, is a pleasure.

I put down used coffee grounds on the soil around the chards (for the extra nitrogen) plus fertilized lightly once with organic Espoma.