SPINACH
Spinach is one very nutritious and versatile leafy green vegetable, packed with valuable healthy molecules that we all benefit from. Spinach grows at its best during the cooler seasons, like spring or autumn, because too much heat makes the spinach go to seed while it is still a few leaves old. Before spinach came to Europe, the Europeans ate more sorrel and other small leafy vegetables that nowadays are more or less "extinct". Spinach has managed to capture the hearts of people so much that they started to use it more and more in cooking. Today, spinach is one of the most important leaf veggies, alongside the lettuce, and is highly valued for its mild flavor and of course its health benefits.
Spinach contains lots of vitamins and minerals of all sorts, but it is also filled with good phenolic anti-oxidants that make it a good vegetable for prevention of cancer. Spinach is also good for prevention of strokes and heart attacks since it contains lots of folate, a vitamin important for reduction of excessive levels of homocysteine. High levels of vitamin K in spinach make this veggie a good alternative for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis (vitamin K activates a bone enzyme called osteocalcine, which in effect makes the bone more crystallized with calcium). If that were not enough, spinach also increases your mental health with its vitamins, and it also makes you more vital and less tired since it contains huge amounts of iron - a mineral important for production of hemoglobin. Maybe that's what Popeye got his strength from?
When you buy spinach, make sure that the leaves look vibrant and tensed. Do not buy any wilted, sweaty or slimy leaves. Also avoid discolored, yellowish leaves - you want to have nice green and slightly shining spinach. Store the spinach in a plastic bag or box, so that the leaves are loose and covered. Put the bag in a refrigerator and use the spinach as soon as you can, because the leaves can wilt very fast. If you want to store cooked spinach, well, just forget about it because it will not keep for a long time and it will definitely not taste as good as freshly cooked spinach. In addition, if you reheat this tender leafy green, you will destroy it severely.
Before you cook the spinach, make sure to wash it thoroughly and quickly in a bowl of water (just swish the leaves around with your hands) and do so with a few changes of water to remove all the sand and dirt. Then dry them on a paper towel.
Cooking spinach should be done with care. The leaves lose a lot of their volume when you heat them, so you can practically load quite a lot of spinach onto the pan as long as you stir it continuously so that the heat is well distributed. Usually spinach is cooked very briefly in butter. Really, the cooking time is 30 seconds or less, depending on how hot the pan is. You should cook it just so that the leaves wilt and then remove it from the hot pan.
One word of caution with spinach: it contains a good amount of oxalates, which is not recommended for people with kidney stone problems or gallbladder problems. If you belong to this group of people, well, you need to restrain yourself from eating spinach.