Linguine with Swiss Chard & Sausage

It’s that time of year again. The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder, and the TV weather man is using his serious voice to warn us that the first frost of the year is just around the corner. Here in the northeast it’s a familiar scenario. One day you’re lounging around with bare feet, bare arms, and bare legs thinking this might just be the year that summer lasts forever, and BAMM… the cold sneaks in and before you know it the windows are closed tight and the slippers come out of the closet. Then one day it happens. You wake up in the morning and your green lawn is covered with a shimmering layer of ice particles…the frost has arrived and summer is over. Of course, the first frost doesn’t actually mean the end to warm temperatures or afternoons spent lazing around on the deck. However, for those of us who enjoy growing our own food, not to mention enjoying the food that others have grown, a hard frost signals the end to the few precious months of the year that we call the growing season here in Vermont. Around here, this first frost warning tends to set us gardeners into a flurry of motion. We begin frantically harvesting and covering our crops. Sometimes we even resort to a bit of pleading with mother nature– just one more week, pleeease. If you drive around on the eve of the first frosty morn your likely to see bed sheets draped over towers of rambling tomato vines, hastily built teepees covering half ripe pumpkins, and baskets of produce ready to come inside.

This is where the story of my recipe begins. When the first frost warning was shouted from the mountain tops last week, like a good gardener I took note and got busy. The last of the cucumbers were plucked out of their yellowing vines, the tomatoes in all stages of readiness were harvested and set on the windowsill to ripen, the basil was cut and turned into pesto, and every last leaf of the red, green, and yellow  Swiss chard was harvested. There was a lot of it, because I LOVE Swiss chard. For the past few years I have been substituting Swiss chard in any recipe that calls for spinach. I like how the chard holds up better to sautéing and steaming than spinach.  It also seems to have a bit more of a bold flavor than spinach and its colorful stems add a visual zing to any dish. Swiss chard is delicious in many, many dishes, but one of my favorite ways to use it is with pasta. The sturdy leaves hold their own with a thick noodle like linguine, and when you throw in a bit of crumbled sausage and some sautéed peppers and garlic it becomes one incredible dish.

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