The Great Food Experiment: Spinached-Out and Rule #27

We decided to boil spinach to make spinach water this week and then used the water as a broth for a vegetarian bean soup. We called it affectionately "spinach-water soup" and we still have lots of left-overs in the fridge for lunches this week. The big debate was what to do with the spinach after we boiled it. We ended up putting it in the soup because it seemed like a waste to throw it away. If we aren't throwing the water away then we shouldn't throw the actual vegetable away, right?! Sadly, the spinach is a little slimy in the soup and next time I might toss the spinach. Which brings me to my next question....is vegetable water ever convenient to use???

I don't know when people would actually just have some spinach water laying around their kitchen to cook with and I don't think I would recommend making spinach water unless it is absolutely convenient. I think most of the time that we cook vegetables in water we are simultaneously cooking other dishes. We aren't going to wait around until the vegetable is done to use the water to boil the pasta because that is just not efficient! Some people in the internet world suggest saving vegetable water in jars for later uses but I just cannot rationalize this. Really?!?! Do these people have ginormous refrigerators with nothing else to put in them? Who knows.

We also had some spinach water plain so we could appreciate the full flavor. Ryan was pretty nervous about this and made me take the first spoonful (see pictures below). Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad. It tasted like any other vegetable broth. I thought it could have used some salt, but that isn't an uncommon issue for me.

On a completely unrelated topic I also included some pictures from a non-spinach meal that we had this week. I took the pictures because I was so excited to be using my new pasta machine that Ryan got me for Christmas. Using a pasta machine is a whole lot easier than how I used to make homemade pasta and it tastes way better (less thick noodles). We had homemade whole wheat noodles with a tomato-basil chicken sauce, glazed carrots, baked squash, and sauteed chard and caramelized onions. Red wine complemented the meal perfectly. Please note all of the colors (we would have made last week's rule proud!).

Next week is Rule #27: Eat animals that have themselves eaten well. We will be focusing on knowing where the animals we eat lived and what kind of care they got before they were slaughtered.

Making Spinach Water