In light of the recent spinach/leaf lettuce incidents, what are you substituting for spinach? Or, have you just given up (for the time being) spinach all together? I heard of one chef using swiss chard and/or baby bok choy in spinach dishes with surprising results. The dishes had a more nuttier flavor and was well received.

spinach -- from the farmers market.

Rainbow chard. Yum.

Ditto. I've even used it to replace spinach in a souffle.

Frozen spinach was not implicated in the recall. Additionally if you are cooking the spinach (my understanding) the risk of e coli is mitigated.

Plus the recall on spinach has expired and you can find bagged spinach again at the store.

But... I stopped buying bagged spinach about a year ago because I became suspicious of the decay often found inside the bag.

It was only bagged spinach. I had a lovely bunch of fresh spinach (not bagged) from WF last night.



By the way, it seems they have identified the source of the contamination as a cattle farm about a mile from the spinach fields from whence came the contaminated spinach.

I always wonder about that. I know it probably doesn't taste as good but I am not wasting a whole bag just because it doesn't taste quite the same. So its' not dangerous when it starts to get that mushy brown look on some of the edges is it?

This spinach recall reached paranoid levels a few weeks ago at a dinner prepared by my sister-in-law. She made a spinach rice using frozen spinach. Clearly, the spinach was also cooked. One of our dining companions freaked out when he realized that there was spinach in the rice. Our assurances that only fresh, bagged spinach was the source of the problem did not stop him from scooping the rice off of his dinner plate and onto his bread plate.

There are some things I tend to use frozen spinach for because of the volume of fresh spinach required to come up with the necessary amount. I don't care for the bagged fresh spinach. There's something in the bagging material that gives off a smell that bothers me. When I use the fresh baby greens, I buy them in the clamshells, which seem to keep the contents fresh for a much longer time than the bags, and they reseal fully. I haven't bought any really recently, but that's more because I've had an overabundance of other produce and have not been buying much additional in the way of greens.

I think at this point, when possible, for spinach that will remain raw, I'm inclined to go with spinach in bunches or that has been grown locally on a fairly small-scale (ditto for other greens).

My friend made spanakopita (forgive me if the spelling's incorrect) w/ baby bok choy instead of spinach in her Greek cooking class a few weeks ago in my culinary school. It tasted fantastic and I definitely want to try this in the future as I'll probably have baby bok choy on hand rather than spinach more often than not.

A request to every person living in the United States of America:

Please read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

or at the very least, read Pollan's NY Times comments in regards to the spinach issue.

I think it's particularly important for those pushing spinach onto their side plate.