Yummy Yummy

Fall produce is just one of the season's many charms. I love summer berries, but by the end of summer aren't you ready for apples and root veggies and squash?

The cold weather asks for warm foods, for heavy cream and butter. This is how you get fat. So instead of grabbing for a pound cake or calling out for curry (yum!), go for some greens. Kundalinis believe that the reason we get sick in the winter is that we eat too many sweets made with white sugar and not enough green stuff. So many people pound the vitamin C and ecanacia at the first sign of a cold. But, really, tough green foods have just as many vitamins and the combo may be more effective. I have no real data to back this up. But it definitely tastes better and warms you up, too. Its just like a nice nap blanket for your tummy.

While making this dish of peas and lettuce on her television show, Nagella Lawson waxed orgastic about the joys of staring into a bowl of green on a cloudy winter day. I can't agree more. I have been staring into a bowl of chard with garlic and red pepper flakes, a la Alice Waters, for the past two weeks.

Then, I'll make a dish of squash and red bell peppers on the side, because the bell peppers have been great this fall and doesn't it just add the right amount of color. I'm thinking of how Obama tried to make every meal at the DNC have one each of five colors. He took some heat for that. But, once again, the man is a leader, and a leader looking to take us in the right direction.

This weeks Dining In/Dining Out has a great little ditty about the intersection of growing seasons for chard and peppers. I love chard. I hope to make this recipe this week.

I hear that after the hurricane my father really relished trashing the chard that I had bought and left in his fridge. Well, that's fine, but I think that this casserole might make him a chard convert. It looks really yummy and really rich. So, one of you gentle readers out there should make this casserole and take it over to him and tell him that its a broccoli casserole. He will eat it and love it and talk about how underrated broccoli is. This is one of my favorite of my father's rants. He is completely right; broccoli tempura is fantastic, cream of broccoli soup rocks, and broccoli stir fry is also a lovely little surprise. After this rant, tell him that it was chard all along.