As I wrote about our recent recipe failures, I remembered a surprising successful recipe and thought I would share it. I found this recipe while I was doing some menu planning on Thursday morning. I pulled out a Weight Watchers cookbook to get some inspiration, and Caleb started looking over my shoulder. The cookbook has lovely pictures throughout, and he asked all sorts of questions about what each dish was and of course made all sorts of comments (nice and not) about what he saw. I was near the end of the book when he demanded that I turn back a few pages. He pointed to a picture with a skillet of spinach and some garlic cloves and insisted that we make and eat it. I was really skeptical even though I know Caleb likes kale and will eat salad fixings as long as they have no dressing. Still, I figured getting more greens in my diet is a good thing. Even if your kids won't touch green vegetables, you might want to try this as a side because it's yummy and pretty simple.
Tuscan-style Garlic Spinach
From Weight Watchers - 2 PointsPlus per serving
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 lbs. spinach, touch stems removed
1 Tbsp. olive oil
4 large garlic cloves, halved
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
Instructions:
Bring large pot of water to boil. Add spinach, in batches if necessary, and cook until wilted, about 2 minutes. Drain in colander and rinse under cold running water. Squeeze out excess water and chop.
Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until golden, about 4 minutes. Add spinach and increase heat to medium-high. Add salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until spinach is heated through, about 3 minutes.
Notes/Changes:
I didn't have the 2 lbs. of spinach on hand, more like 1-1.5 pounds, and I would definitely try this recipe with even more spinach. I don't think it would make good leftovers, but I definitely would appreciate having more. Chopping wet spinach is not the easiest thing to do. Yes, I drained and squeezed. I ended up having a lump of spinach which I cut in a grid shape. Speaking of spinach, I'm not sure what the Weight Watchers folks think I buy for spinach when they talk about the tough stems, but I used baby spinach and was quite pleased.
No reason to spend time boiling water, cooking spinach, rinsing, squeezing, cutting. It's much easier to rip dry spinach and through into pot after garlic has cooked a little. You have to put it in, in batches, a little at a time, but in a minute or so it will cook down and besides being easier and faster, it's healthier because you aren't losing nutrients in the water. BTW, baby spinach doesn't have tough stems, but regular spinach does. If baby spinach no reason to bother ripping or cutting. If regular spinach, as you rip it, you tear out the stem.
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