Swiss Chard with Beets

April rain. The garden coming alive. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 1, a small loud animal. She mostly eats rice and bananas. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Bibimbap Saturday. The rainbow bowl. Carrots, spinach, mung bean sprouts, beef, fried egg. Gochujang on top.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

I FaceTimed Jisoo in the morning. She watched me make doenjang jjigae and corrected my technique. The chain extends.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

Bibimbap Saturday was everything it needed to be — the rainbow bowl, the gochujang, the fried egg on top — but it was the vegetables that stayed with me longest, the way each one holds its own color and texture even crowded into the same bowl. When I have energy for the full production I make bibimbap; when I don’t, I reach for something that gives me the same feeling with half the effort. Swiss chard with beets is that dish: deep red and bright green, earthy and a little sharp, the kind of thing you can put together while Hana is still loud and the house is still full and you just need dinner to be good and done.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 large bunch Swiss chard (about 12 oz), stems and leaves separated
3 medium beets, roasted or boiled, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts (optional)

Instructions

Prep the chard. Rinse the Swiss chard well. Slice the stems crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces and roughly chop the leaves. Keep them separate — the stems need more time in the pan.
Cook the stems. Heat olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the chard stems and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4–5 minutes until they begin to soften. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Wilt the leaves. Add the chopped chard leaves in batches, turning with tongs to coat in the oil. Cook 3–4 minutes, stirring, until fully wilted and tender.
Add the beets. Fold in the diced beets and cook 2–3 minutes until warmed through. The beets will bleed into the chard — lean into the color.
Finish and season. Drizzle balsamic vinegar over the pan and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a serving dish and scatter pine nuts over the top if using. Serve warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Swiss Chard with Beets — The Rainbow Bowl, by Another Name