Summer Dinner: Pork Chops and Grilled Chard

On Friday afternoon, my friend Sam came into town from D.C. and we got to meet up for an amazing cheese and meat filled celebratory lunch since she's moving to Africa next month to start an amazing fellowship! Afterwards we took a walk around the Copley farmer's market. She's just visiting, so I bought enough at the farmers market for both of us. It all looked so amazing! A huge bunch of swiss chard, beets, radishes, and pork chops (Sam, I ran back to buy those after we parted and barely made my train, ha!).

The next night, after a long day of paper writing and house hunting (Oh, the panelling! The linolium! The cracked ceilings!!!), Peter whipped up that lovely drink - a dark and story sunset! Basically, it's a dark and stormy with some hot pink grenadine at the bottom. It was awesome.

For the pork chops, Peter just put a little salt, pepper, and smoked paprika on top before grilling them. I made a little pesto with beet and radish greens (blanch them for a minute first to get the sand out), pistachios and feta, and mixed that in with jasmine rice - surprisingly good.

But weirdly, the star of this dinner was the grilled swiss chard salad. I grilled kale last summer, and I guess it was fine, but I barely remember it, which tells you something. But grilled chard! Who knew. Keep the pieces very big, and don't worry about removing the rib in the center of the leaves. I put all the leaves in a bowl and tossed them with salt and a good amount of olive oil - the leaves should be pretty shiny. Put them in a grill basket and flip them once after a minute or two.

Summer Sunday Saturday Dinner: Pork Chops and Grilled Chard

• Dark and stormy sunsets
• Grilled swiss chard salad with sliced radishes and feta
• Rice with beet and radish greens pesto
• Grilled pork chops
• Cabot's coffee toffee heath sundae (it was Saturday night, after all!)