how do I prepare swiss chard?

I use it all the time, it works with a lot of dishes similarly to spinach. I put it in soups, I put it with pasta, I've put it in ossobuco. The one thing I haven't done is just saute'd it and served it by itself. Sure, treat it like southern greens....
I've been known to saute it in a bit of olive oil and garlic and add a little chili pepper.. before I add it to pasta, or rice..

I used to grow swiss chard in the garden all and always just used it in place of spinach. The simplest is probbably just to blanch it and serve it as a side veggie (little chunks of bacon and/or pearl onions work well with it).

I've put little bits of prosciutto with it, though I didn't mention that, and you are thinking ham hock and fishin' mentioned bacon... great minds think alike!

Take out the thick white stalky bits, roughly chop it and steam it (micro-wave is OK).

Or the gold stems, or the red stems... there are a bunch of different chard varieties. Sometimes I separate the stems, and cook them first, then add the torn up leaves. If it's soup, I don't care about that.

As to texture, it's a little off for us to say just-like-spinach (I know I intimated that) since spinach breaks down faster. In my own mind, I have it breaking down, re timing, between spinach and kale...

It was delicious!!!

I chopped up some bacon and rendered out the fat, threw in a chopped clove of garlic for a minute, added the blanched swiss chard and diced white turnips, a few grates of nutmeg and half a can of chicken broth, let it simmer for about 10 minutes and added a can of rinsed cannellini beans and simmered for another 10 minutes. The beans were overkill but I knew the girls would skip the lamb chops and I wanted them to have a protein.

To go with the greens 'n beans and lamb I also made some oven roasted yukon gold potato wedges tossed with olive oil, oregano, rosemary, salt and pepper.

DH gave the whole meal a rousing YUM, the girls said they liked the potatoes and the entire thing took less than an hour. Success!

All right....

All right....

Your children ate GREEN FOOD!!!! Call the Guinness Book of Records and Nature magazine - this must be a first!!

And it's the easiest plant to grow in your garden, J_B! It last for ages & seems to almost thrive on neglect! I grow the "rainbow chard" variety - pink, purplish & golden stems - & plant them in my flower beds amongst the flowers & shrubs. Very pretty! Then, any time I need a "green" boost in a soup, casserole, whatever, I pick some leaves & throw 'em in. The very young, tender ones can be eaten raw in salads. The way I usually prepare chard (silverbeet) is to add shredded leaves to olive oil, garlic & dried chili. A chick saute & Yum! Nice on steamed rice, too, when you crave a bit of simplicity.