I'm a Spinach Fan?

Lauren Marie’s Gluten Free

Sweet Spinach Sauté 

Spinach... it can be a dreaded word. Long gone are the days of Popeye pounding two cans of the green vegetable and wooing Olive over with those big biceps.  Those were the good 'ol days!

You don't have to be a health nut to know that spinach is good for you. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that there is a good chance that 70% of people don't really like the taste of it.

I have to admit, I fall into both categories.  I guess you could say I'm a fair weather fan of the vegetable. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I just don't.

But since making my green rule- one green with every dinner- spinach and I had some making up to do.


When I would browse through the produce section for my green rule quota, there it was, spinach, staring me in the face. Spinach is available year-round.  And they come in packages already washed... how much easier could it be?

OK, I decided, I'll channel my inner Popeye...

For me, the key to a good spinach dish is to either hide its flavor or enhance it.  One of my favorite hide-tactics is making a yummy smoothie!

So Easy Spinach Smoothie:
8 oz almond milk
2.5 oz of spinach (half bag)
half of a banana (frozen if possible)
5 frozen strawberries
1 tablespoon honey.

(Blend together in a blender until smooth)

You hide the spinach flavor with the sweetness from the fruit and honey....and you get all those nutrients!  Brilliant!



Or you can enhance its natural taste with a bold punch of other flavors too.  So, I like to add it to a spicy spaghetti dish or a meaty omelet.  You get a delicate spinach flavor, but you hardly notice it's there. And it really wilts down, so you can add a lot of spinach for good fiber and Vitamin K without having to eat a huge salad!


Patrick and I have a favorite restaurant that serves a spinach dish that I just had to try at home.  It was a very simple concept, sweet and savory...spinach with garlic, figs, and a touch of a honey.  It was so good, I started to crave it!  I eagerly gobbled it up every time we went there.  I became amazed at how much I actually enjoyed eating it.

Was I really a spinach fan?

It turns out, I wasn't a fair weather spinach fan.  I was a real fan all along, I just had to do spinach my way.  

I had to hide it sometimes, let it play with bold flavors sometimes, and decorate it with sweetness sometimes.  

So, I created my Sweet Spinach Sauté for those days that I wanted a little sweetness with my green veggie.  And now, I can gobble it up, whenever I want!