Spinach: A Leafy Story

I like spinach. It is green and leafy and despite it being part of the dirt dozen, it is supposed still be good for you. I thought that I would try and beat the system and grow my own spinach. A bag of baby spinach is $3.99 a bag and a nine pack of garden spinach is $4.99.  It seemed like pretty easy math on my part.

It took three days and two nights to turn a grassy pox ridden spot in my back yard to become a mini flower and vegetable oasis. The ground was clay. Up rooting sod on top of clay jostled every nerve ending of my body. With much thanks, my mother came down with a case of the shits (that is her get out of work excuse) and took a day to help me remove sod and prep the garden.  Every bone, every muscle, and every mental fiber went into the garden and its creation. Perennials were planted.   Two Tomato plants, three pepper plants and six spinach plants went into the garden. It was the dream of a fresh spinach salad.

The only hitch in that plan was the fact that spinach grows at a much faster rate then the tomatoes. I had six very healthy spinach plants that were growing leaves the size of my head and a real blank what to do with spinach other then the obvious spinach salad.  In the beginning I tossed it into soup. Then I tossed it into curry, because I love spinach curry when I go out to eat.  But I couldn't keep up.  It just kept getting bigger and bigger. The abnormal weather we were having of lots of rain following by sunshine, worked as a natural growth hormone. My spinach got huge over night.

After harvesting spinach and giving it away, I still had a whole bunch of spinach left. It kept growing and the more I harvested, the more it came back.  So it was time to get creative. It was time to do something with the spinach. In the last week I have made several spinach dishes and I am oddly okay with this.

Sunday: Harvest all the feasible spinach from the garden and clean it.  Take a portion of spinach and make vegetable soup out of it. Eat a little bit of sauteed spinach with garlic and butter

Monday: Avoid looking spinach in the eye as you make smoothies.

Tuesday: Start spinach and ricotta gnocchi dough and eat chicken salad wrapped in spinach. Make Meat loaf and incorporate spinach into meat dough and bake.  Ignore the flecks of green and just keep
eating.

Wednesday: Finish spinach gnocchi and eat left over spinach and other vegetable soup from Sunday.

Thursday: Avoid looking spinach in the eye.

In four days, I have done four different spinach recipes. All taste good and for the most part healthy, but clearly not enough, because I still have more spinach.  I am on the hunt for more spinach recipes that I can incorporate my mutant large spinach in peacefully.  The moral of this story is that if you are going to plant something, be prepared for it to grow and have a plan for produce!