I don’t recall a single time I ever ate spinach in my childhood. I don’t think my mom used it very much, although maybe she snuck it in without the family knowing it. If it was ever offered, I claimed that I didn’t like it. When I went to college and started cooking for myself, I always used iceberg lettuce as my green leafy vegetable of choice, and I kept using it after I got married.
Around a year and a half ago, on a church women’s retreat, someone put on a demonstration of how to make smoothies using fresh spinach. Of course the demonstration included samples, which were delicious and exciting. When I got home from the retreat, I bought spinach for the first time ever so that I could make my husband a spinach smoothie. He’s always up for trying new (even green) foods, and he enjoyed the smoothie very much. Ever since then, spinach smoothies have been a fairly regular treat in our home. But for a long time, I didn’t try using spinach in any other way.
When I was pregnant, we took a childbirth class which met once a week and included dinner. The teacher used dinner as a way to teach nutrition, which was a big focus of the class. One of the first meals she cooked for us was tacos and instead of lettuce, she offered spinach to use as a topper. I hesitantly put some on my tacos and was surprised to find that it didn’t make any difference! This opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of spinach. We now use it for pretty much everything we used to use lettuce for…salads, sandwiches, whatever! I also mix it in to eggs, pasta dishes, and soups. When you puree it and add it to a white casserole, it turns the casserole a beautiful pesto green and doesn’t change the flavor at all!
Spinach is one of those ridiculously nutritious foods. I just looked up the nutrition facts for it and was going to list all the good vitamins and minerals spinach contains, but there were so many of them that it would have looked silly. It is also very affordable. I normally buy the 1 pound tubs of organic baby spinach from Costco which cost $3 or $4 because I don’t have to worry about washing it. And of course the non-organic kind is even cheaper.
Here’s a couple recipes for you:
Spinach smoothies
1 orange
1 banana
~10 strawberries
2 big handfuls of spinach
1 cup water
Blend together. Use frozen fruit or ice if you want it to be slushy. There are a million variations…I also love using fresh mango or peach or pineapple!
Spinach salad
6 cups of spinach
½ cup pecans
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup crumbled bacon (I cook it in the microwave)
Croutons
Toss together with your dressing of choice. Add whatever you want…I like these ingredients because there is no chopping required! It’s super fast and delicious.
