As the ridiculously humorous Karen over at The Art of Doing Stuff Calls them……….I’m talking about all the Swiss Chard that I finally got around to putting up in the freezer yesterday. I always plant Swiss chard in the garden because it is so easy to grow. At some point during each season, I always start wishing I had not planted it because it just grows so fast and easily and you just.can’t. kill. it. I always end up with so much of it and, quite honestly, the husband and I don’t eat enough of it to whittle it down at all.  So there I am, every year, at the end of every summer……..staring at a big patch of something that looks like this……

And wondering what, exactly, I’m going to do with it. It’s a sea of green that seems to grow rampantly, no matter how fiercely I ignore it.  So this year, I couldn’t stand seeing it all go to waste, and–not wanting to make 1000 gallons of soup with it just to get it into the freezer–I did a little investigating. As it turns out, you can actually freeze the stuff! And it’s really simple to do. As mentioned before, Karen at The Art of Doing Stuff has an excellent tutorial on how to accomplish this. Her blog post on freezing greens for the winter is the best I’ve seen yet.

First, you pick it all from the garden. It’s better if you let your dog supervise this.

I think Cleo approves. Then you wash it, trim it, and throw it in a pot of boiling water for 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes has passed, plunge the goods into a bowl (or a sinkful) of ice water.

After 2 minutes in the cold water, you remove the leaves, squeeze them out, and roll them up into little balls. Hence, the reason they’re referred to as “Little Swiss Brains”.

Get it? Get it? After all that is done (so simple, right??), you lump them into the sandwich bags and chuck them into the freezer.

They’ll be waiting there for you when you’re ready for some fresh frozen green stuff in the middle of winter.  And now to find the time for that 1000 gallons of soup…………..