Spinach Lorraine

My friend Lorraine is a wonderful artist and an excellent and creative cook. Whenever she describes some fantastic dish she's prepared, my first thought is to pack a bag and go live at her house. I'm far too lazy to re-create most of the lovely food items she describes, but the other day she e-mailed that she'd made something really easy and worthy of making again. I agree.



Lorraine said, "I did a sort of easy dish last week that makes me want to try it again. I browned a little fresh garlic in a dash of oil, added a splash of vinegar to reduce for just a minute. Then turned off the heat and threw in a lot of spinach and stirred it around. While I was waiting for it to wilt I sectioned a grapefruit into it and zested a little lemon. I wasn't sure how it would be but it was just the right mix of tangy, pungent and healthy!"

Sounded good to me so I tried it and she was right. It was excellent and easy. I made it with orange segments instead of grapefruit and it was festive as well as delicious. Try both! We had the spinach with cauliflower puree (see previous post) and garbanzo bean salad.

Some personal spinach history: When I was eight and the third child in our family was born, my mother needed bed rest and a nurse came to live at our house for a week. One of her duties was to keep us other kids from bothering our mother, and that included feeding us lunch. One day I was confronted with the most horrible and frightening blob of slimy green crud on my plate. It turned out to be creamed spinach which I'd never seen before and the tiniest taste of which made me gag. The nurse was mean, and said we had to eat it. I sneaked into my mother's room after lunch to tell her that I was sure the nurse was trying to poison us, and she should make her leave. Apparently the nurse tried to poison my mother with the same green slime and I found a sympathetic ear. It took me a long time before I was willing to try spinach again — and it was fresh spinach, which is a totally different vegetable.