Finally!

I just saw that the spinach ban has been lifted. Boy am I glad! I looove spinach! I've missed it! Why couldn't it have been zucchini or brussel sprouts or collard greens or something vile like that that got E. coli?

I actually didn't know that there was a spinach-E. coli outbreak until last week. I had decided that there isn't enough iron in my diet, so I planned this week's dinners entirely around spinach. (I always have such impeccable timing.) I was going to have Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi with a spinach salad on the side. I was very excited because, like I said, I looove spinach! But when I got to the grocery store, there were all these signs in the produce section about how all spinach products had been pulled due to the recent E. coli outbreak. Yikes! Well, I had already planned my meals and made my shopping list. I wasn't about to go back home, decide on a new recipe, make a new shopping list, and go back to the grocery store. I kept looking for a loophole. Ok, the bagged spinach was definitely gone, that's where the signs were. What about non-slacker fresh spinach? (You know, the kind that still has stems and dirt on it.) Nope, none of that either. Arrrr. Next I looked for frozen spinach. Somehow, amazingly, this was still in stock. Good thing too, because canned spinach is probably worse than driving back and forth to make a new menu plan. Of course, being frozen, it completely defeated the purpose of iron intake, but at least I got to have my yummy pasta with spinach balls (I served my gnocchi atop pasta to stretch it out a few more nights) with a field greens salad. (Don't get me started on field greens. They're next to worthless! They're just crunchy water. The only nutrients in that salad were fiber and vitamin-a, which I already OD on with my multiple servings of carrots a day (seriously, my feet are turning orange from it).)

When I checked out with my groceries, the cashier almost refused to let me buy the frozen spinach. "We're not supposed to be selling any spinach," she told me. I begged. They had to let me have the spinach! Frozen spinach was already a huge compromise. I couldn't go home spinachless! Finally I found a trump card: "Please don't make me go to Safeway! I have to have spinach, but I hate Safeway! You have to let me buy this spinach!"

I shop at the coolest grocery store I know: the Nugget. It's a great local store that started in Woodland. There are a few other locations now, including 2 in Davis, but they're all in the area. I think the farthest away one is in Vacaville. It's got the best produce section around. I switched over a few years ago because Safeway was just too enraging. I was tired of having to try several different stores before finding rutabagas, and the time that Safeway didn't have any basil was the last straw. One of my favorite pastimes with Nugget cashiers and baggers is actually to slam Safeway; they hate it too. And since they hate it too, they couldn't let me go there for spinach. They had to let me have the frozen spinach! Phwew! I just had to promise them that if I got really sick, I wouldn't mention them. No problem. I'd just blame it on the mouse I found in my kitchen last weekend! (Incidentally, I caught and released it, and there don't seem to be any others. I'm so glad it was an infestation of one!)

So that's that. I got my frozen (boo) spinach. I made my spinach gnocchi (yay). And now non-Salinas spinach has been given the ok (yayayayayay)! I can't wait until it's in stores again! Last weekend Ben and I actually had a little bit of leftover spinach still in our fridge. We considered making a fast profit by selling it on the black market, but broke down pretty quickly and ate it ourselves :D. I wonder what black-market spinach goes for....