I happen to like spinach, although eating the tinny, metallic green slop masquerading as spinach when I was a child certainly put me off my spinach-feed for a long time. When I was coming up, our vegetables were fresh in season – for us, not another continent – and if they were out of season they were either frozen or canned.
Frozen spinach came in a little box, frost-bitten, dry, flavorless. Canned spinach always tasted like the can. Neither was appealing. Well, times have changed, haven’t they? Fresh spinach seems to be available all year round, with fresh local (or semi-local) leaves being available in spring and fall, and throughout the summer, too. Keeping that in mind, let’s answer the question: why should I eat spinach?
Spinach is mostly water, so you can eat a lot of it without worrying too much about calories. Not quite the same if you eat creamed spinach made with with butter, half and half and nutmeg. Just sayin’. Spinach is high in a number of minerals, in particular calcium. Strong bones need calcium, so if you are old enough to worry about osteoporosis (as I am), spinach is the veg for you. When I was a kid I was anaemic, so I was forced to eat spinach because it was high in iron. Now, I cook my spinach in a cast iron pan and add some citrus to it to increase the amount of iron my body can use.
Spinach is good for your eyes, too.It contains vitamin A and lutein and zeaxanthin (which I take as supplements.) Perhaps if I hadn’t fought eating my spinach when I was a kid, I wouldn’t be wearing glasses now. Nah, I would still have to wear them. So, grab a bag of spinach the next time you go shopping. Here is a good spinach recipe.
Heat a little olive oil in a pan and add as much garlic as you like. Cook for a minute or two, letting the garlic soften but not brown. Then add your spinach, stir and cover the pot. Cook on low heat for a couple of minutes, just until the spinach wilts. Some people cook bacon, remove it from the pan and cook the garlic (and onion) in the bacon fat, but I can’t stand the stuff so I stick with garlic and olive oil. If I have time, I’ll roughly chop a thick slice of onion and add that to the garlic and oil before I add the spinach. If you use onion, put the onion in the pan first, because it takes longer to soften than garlic. After the spinach had just barely cooked, remove the lid, add salt and pepper, and let it cook another minute or two more. Eat it immediately – don’t overcook it.