About now, the plethora of garden vegetables makes me forget that I ever thought it was such a good idea to plant them all. Some of you actually get to choose how many vegetables you want in the house because you go to the store or the farmers market and pick out exactly what you need. People with gardens take what Mother Nature dishes out, and right now, she is bellowing, “Eat your vegetables.” And we better get good at eating, pickling, freezing or giving them away, or else.

Kristen Lainsbury had asked about Swiss chard, and Marion Fowler in Millinocket joined with others to help out, sending along a couple of ideas from her favorite what-to-do-with-all-these-vegetables cookbooks, including that wonderful “Too Many Tomatoes, Squash, Beans, and Other Good Things” by Lois M. Landau and Laura G. Myers (Harper Perennial, way back in 1976) and “The Green Thumb Cookbook” by the editors of Organic Gardening and Farming, edited by Anne Moyer, (Rodale Press, 1977). I suspect these books appeared about the time Kristen was knee-high to a Swiss chard leaf. Both crop up in book sales, yard sales and online.

Anyway, Marion recommended Bengali Swiss Chard to me, but typically I fiddled with it, mostly because my garden doesn’t have eggplants which the recipe called for, but it does have zucchini. (Surprise!)

The result tastes very good, must be just crawling with antioxidants and leaves you feeling deliciously virtuous. The zuke would be really good cooked on the grill before being introduced to the rest of the vegetables. This recipe could easily become the main dish if you served it on a big bed of rice, with chutney on the side. If you wanted meat with it, a little cooked chicken, sliced thinly and tossed in or even grilled and served hot on the side would not be amiss.

Looking for…

Personally, I would like a good recipe for cornichons, those lovely little tarragon-flavored, tiny cucumbers, because I suspect a bumper crop of cukes is in the offing.

Send queries or answers to Sandy Oliver, 1061 Main Road, Islesboro 04848. E-mail: tastebuds@prexar.com. Tell us where your recipes came from. List ingredients, specify number of servings, and do not abbreviate measurements. Include name, address and daytime phone number.

Curried Zucchini and Chard

Serves 6-8 as a side dish

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of butter (optional)

2 large onions, sliced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 pound of carrots, about 4-5, sliced

1 1/2 pounds of zucchini, sliced

1 teaspoon of salt

A few grinds of black pepper

1 1/2 tablespoons of curry powder

1 teaspoon of cumin

1/2 pound of Swiss chard

Heat the olive oil and butter in a large pot on medium high heat and add the onions. Cook them, allowing them to soften, and then add the garlic. Let it cook another minute. Add the carrots, with a couple tablespoons of water. Reduce the temperature to medium and cook, covered, for about 8-10 minutes or until they begin to be tender. Remove the ribs from the chard, and slice them, reserving the leafy portion.

Then add the zucchini, chard rib pieces, salt, pepper, curry powder and cumin. Toss everything, and then cook it covered over a medium heat about 5 minutes or until the vegetables are just tender. Meanwhile shred the chard using either a knife or a pair of scissors, and when the vegetables are done, stir in the chard leaves, and keep it hot for a moment longer to wilt the leaves. Taste and adjust seasonings.