I ran into the grocery today for produce. I grabbed what I thought was labeled Kale. It has red stems like rhubarb. Is this kale or did I get rhubarb by mistake? I wanted to use the leaves in a chinese dish. I am thinking that the leaves of rhubarb are poisonous.

You just might have picked up Swiss Chard which sometimes has red stems. It's definitely not rhubarb. Go ahead and use it in your recipe.

Red Kale also exists - it looks like this:



Red Chard looks like this:

Rhubarb is usually sold as just stems (no leaves attached.) I agree that it is more than likely Red Chard.

Thanks for the answers, I was in a panic - silly, I know!

You gals are exactly right! I looked at the print out receipt after I posted. It said sw chard rd, which I take to mean Swiss Chard, Red. I am fairly certain it was labeled as kale, but it is definitely the stuff Amada has pictured as chard. I looked on Wikipedia, but the chard/kale they showed was white.

Anyway, I got the idea from an old thread about chard and kale. Folks were using it in asian type dishes. I bought bean sprouts, and I have peppers, onions, to make a stir-fry. Hope I like it.

Chard is realllly good - and comes with all sorts of colors for the stem. We grow it in the summer and use it anywhere you'd use spinach. It's much more tender than kale, so will cook faster, but it'll be fine for what you're making. Sounds good to me. I made a dish last week with chard from my CSA box (which is "local" from WA to Alaska ) in which the uncooked chard was mixed into hot pasta which had a sauteed onion, pepper and garlic with it. I added the cut up chard and a little more olive oil, and the heat of pasta was enough to wilt the chard perfectly.

PS - love your kitties. I had 2 siamese, but one died last spring. We're looking for another.

I've seen the chard/kale mislabeling quite frequently. I don't know if the terms are sometimes interchangeable or the produce managers just think "close enough."

I think you got it with "close enough". I think chard was what I really wanted anyway. I love the idea of different colored stems - I like my food to be visually appealing. I'll see how it goes with chard and then maybe graduate to kale.

WaterRat, your pasta dish sounds good. That's what I always do with spinach - wilt it with the residual heat of the dish.

PS - the cats are what I call semi-mese. They are really just mutts wearing siamese clothing. We don't have the one on the left anymore. Something got him a while back. We sure miss him.