Friday Foodie Fix -Spinach

Friday Foodie Fix

Friday Foodie Fix

I can’t believe we’ve not had spinach for our Secret Ingredient for Friday Foodie Fix until now!  I love spinach and it’s a great spring and winter vegetable.  Whenever I think about spinach I still have visions of Popeye and the effect it had on him.  It always makes me smile.  As a kid I’d love to watch the cartoon on TV, but I still wouldn’t eat it.  Only in the past 15-20 years have I even given it a try.  Now I love it just about any way you want to fix it.

According to the The Produce Bible: Essential Ingredient Information and More Than 200 Recipes for Fruits, Vegetables, Herbs & Nuts, spinach is thought to have originated in Persia.  It is still eaten in large quantities as a fundamental part of the Iranian diet.  It is considered the “prince of vegetables” and combined with eggs, pine nuts, raisins and in lamb stews.

Spinach is an excellent source of beta carotene, folate, vitamin C, calcium and iron.  When you bring your spinach spinach leaf home this is the best way I have found to keep it fresh for a long time.  Make a bath either in a deep bowl or your clean sink.  Toss in the spinach and spin it around like a washer.  For an added cleaner you can toss in a little gluten free baking soda.

Leave it alone for a little while.  This will allow all of the dirt and sediment to sink to the bottom of the sink and leave your spinach leaves clean.  Put them into a plastic bag with a paper towel.  It will be damp from the leaves but if not make sure it’s a little damp.

I find spinach to be one of those vegetables that I can hide in many dishes.  If you cut it small then it looks like any other herb.  I use to do this a lot to my husband, but now he seems to like spinach so I just cook it up on its own now and serve it bold.  Here are a few of my recipes with spinach, I hope you will share yours.  I would love it even more if you would note on your blog that you are sharing here.  For all of the directions, check out a whole page dedicated to Friday Foodie Fix. There you will find directions and links to all of the past Secret Ingredients.

Spinach, Mushroom, & Bacon with White Wine

Chilean Sea Bass with Spinach & Mushrooms

Pizza Soup

Next week’s Secret Ingredient is ………………….Pork!


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