Learning to Love Spinach

When I was a kid spinach was not a favorite in my house. I think it had something to do with Popeye and canned spinach. I’m not sure if the canned spinach producers sponsored Popeye, but that watery tasteless spinach from the can did nothing for me and as a girl of the sixties being strong like Popeye didn’t have any appeal either.  
About the time I was twelve years old my parents went to Italy and my father discovered fresh cooked spinach with garlic. I am forever thankful that my Dad’s love of food and high school Latin classes gave him enough language skills to learn from the Italian restaurant people how to make spinach perfectly. Of course my Dad’s version had a good amount of olive oil in it so it was no wonder it tasted delicious.
Once that first trip to Italy happened there was no more canned spinach in my childhood home. We still had plenty of frozen spinach, but that too was doctored up with fresh garlic and olive oil.  
Nowadays fresh spinach is sold mainly in the baby form. This is a huge improvement over the last century version, which had tough stems. The only issue is that baby spinach cooks down to virtually nothing so it takes a huge amount of raw greens to make a decent serving. Since there are very few calories in spinach why not eat a huge helping? Oh yeah, you need a huge bag.
I stopped at Costco this week to get some salmon and spinach and was lucky enough to find a 2 1/2 pound bag. Carter’s friend Ashley was in the kitchen as I was cooking dinner for me and Russ since the girls were going to a party. “That’s a lot of spinach,” Ashley said as I mounded handful upon handful of leaves into my giant skillet with the barley cooked garlic already in it. I told her to watch as I deftly flipped the raw leaves over in the hot pan with my kitchen tongs two or three times.  
Suddenly the once overflowing pan had a small mound of hot wet spinach, no oil or water was added in my version. A flick of the nutmeg grater and a sprinkle of salt and pepper and it was done. It only took a little more than a pound of spinach to feed two of us. I can’t imagine how many bags it would take for a whole dinner party.
The best part about eating that spinach is that every time I make it I am reminded of the time my father first did it for us when he returned from Italy. Learning the difference between a fresh and canned food unlocked a whole world to me. It also taught me that if I did not like one dish it did not mean that I never would like that ingredient. It started me experimenting with food and taught me that often the simplest way was the best. It also taught me to follow my father’s lead and if I liked the way something was cooked to ask a lot of questions and learn from everyone I could. Popeye could have done a better job selling spinach if he just said it tasted good, rather than saying it made him strong.