Leafy Green Power Plant

Want your family to eat more vegetables?  Leafy greens especially are considered the top food you can eat for nutrition.  Excellent for heart health and brain health both, it is important to include it in your diet as often as possible.

I started including spinach in more meals when I was reading up on Alzheimer’s Prevention. If you have experienced Alzheimer’s or dementia with a family member or friend, you want to do all you can to prevent the disease from affecting those close to you.

Turns out leafy, green spinach is nearly always at the top of the list to eat to help prevent the disease.  That was reason enough to start eating more, but once I started experimenting with it when I cooked, I was surprised how easily it fit into the dishes I prepare.

The Cookbook

That is how I came to publish the new cookbook, The Spinach Collection.  Gathering together the many recipes prepared over the last few years, they are now all found all together in one place.

Does your family eat enough spinach?  Even though many of us are trying to eat a healthier, cleaner diet these days, we still have difficulty fitting in enough vegetable servings each day.  Sometimes we don’t think about it. Sometimes our family avoids it.  Some even claim to dislike it.

Don’t give up.  There are so many ways to add it to your meals that will be completely unnoticeable. Burritos, pizza, even tuna or chicken salad, taste even better with some spinach added.  Any pasta dish looks prettier with the bright green of spinach.  Eggs, soups, casseroles…no matter what you are fixing, toss some in.  Okay, perhaps not desserts, though I am still looking for dessert recipes that use spinach in some way.

You can see I am a definite fan.  Sometimes I forget about it too still.  Then after I make a dish, it occurs to me that spinach would have made a great addition.  That’s why I started prepping it twice a week.

Favorite Tip

One of my top tips to make is easier when I am ready to prepare meals is to “pre-prep.”

Make vegetable prep part of your post grocery routine. Don’t most of us do that already?  When we get home from the grocery store, or the next day if it is late, we trim and clean radishes, carrots, and our other favorite crudités to have ready for snacking.  Now I do the same with spinach, and cauliflower too.  You can prepare enough for a few days at a time. It keeps quite well.

Run several cups through your food processor (or finely chop by hand),  and seal it in a zip bag, so it’s all ready to use.  Then it is so simple to add to whatever you make.  It adds color, to pasta, cauliflower, dishes and adds nutrition.  If it’s already chopped up, easy to toss in to a dish, cooked or uncooked.  You can use it like parsley for garnishing or a finishing touch.  Chopped up, your family members who aren’t crazy about spinach may not even notice it.

You can start with small amounts, even a handful at first.  You might find you enjoy it so much you want to add more and more.  That’s a good thing.  If you enjoy it, do add whole leaf spinach (or rough chop it).  I can’t imagine pasta without it now.

It is still a delight to me to see how great it tastes when added to various dishes.  I hope you will check out the cookbook.  You will find recipes there to suit every taste.

You can take a look and read all about it here.