Spinach

This week I've been trying to tidy up the vegetable garden, picking the cool season crops so I can plant the summer seeds. Yesterday I pulled out all the spinach to make room for green beans and summer squash. Spinach, lettuce and peas are the earliest things I plant, usually sometime in March. Early seeds can be very easy because the regular rain in April and May mean you don't have to do much of anything to them, just keep them clear of weeds. Like lettuce, you can snip off outside leaves when you want them and the rest of the plant keeps growing. Tender spinach leaves have been adding a lovely little tang to my salads for the past month. My favorite way to eat spinach though is wilted and requires many more leaves.

Although spinach is as easy to grow as lettuce, I never seem to be able to grow enough of it for regular cooking in my small garden. Spinach leaves lose an amazing amount of volume when cooked, a pound only yielding a couple servings. My harvest of a dozen or so plants was enough for a generous portion for me at dinner. I place the picked bunches in a container of cold water to rinse then strip off the stems one by one. This may seem tedious but it is worth it to avoid potentially stringy stems although tough stems are more of an issue with store bought spinach that has been sitting around for days or weeks. The rinsed leaves I toss into a pot with a clove of crushed or sliced garlic and a little hot olive oil then cover. Let the spinach cook 3 to 5 minutes, stirring a couple times until the leaves are nicely wilted and a dark, rich green. The garlic lends a nutty flavor to the delicate leaves.

3 Cheers for Chives

Chives are a popular and easy herb to grow in the garden or in containers in your kitchen. The delicate savor of onion in chopped chives is commonly combined with sour cream and cream cheese or sprinkled over dishes as a mild garnish. Garlic or Chinese chives are a more pungent relative with slightly taller, broader leaves and an unmistakable garlic note in their taste. Members of the Allium family, chives are perennials, sprouting new shoots every spring. They are fairly cold hardy; I can usually find my clumps of chives green and thriving from early March until a hard freeze in December. Right now little pinkish purple puffs of flowers are blooming from my chive clump. I like to snip them for small onion scented bouquets leaving a few outside for the bees and for later seed. Garlic chives flower later, taller in loose white fireworks forms.

Chives are best freshly picked. Personally, I love covering a bagel with cream cheese and chives, chopping a bunch to go over boiled potatoes or in potato salad or sprinkling them over a cheesy omelet. Making chive butter to freeze is a great way to store chives or other herbs that don't taste the same dried.

Chive Butter

1 stick butter (8Tbsp)
3-4 Tbsp chopped chives

Let butter sit at room temperature until soft and easy to work. Mix with herbs in a small bowl until well blended. Spoon onto wax paper and remold into a stick shape. Wrap tightly and freeze. Garlic and dill are also fabulous to use for an herb butter!

Add a tablespoon or two of chive butter to the pan before frying fish or to start a simple sauce. A little herbed butter melted and tossed with steamed vegetables is truly delightful.