Spinach, I'm Lost Without You

I am seriously bummed about the E coli outbreak that has killed one person in Wisconsin and sickened 100 others. It's one thing to be undone by, I don't know, some bad foie gras, or rancid triple cream Brie (delish) but to be felled by the Popeye wonder tonic, brimming with good health and B vitamins--it just ain't right. Spinach is what you eat to stay out of the hospital, not to hasten your arrival to the dialysis unit.

I feel personally adrift since I always have at least one bag of pre-washed spinach in my fridge, because it's ridiculously easy, equally good raw and cooked and amazingly versatile. There is no other vegetable this easy and as a result of this recall, I have literally eaten no vegetables. Well, yesterday I had a spicy ginger cookie from Peet's with big hunks of ginger, so I guess I have technically eaten a vegetable, but it was smothered in butter and molasses. That was a really good cookie. Anyway if the spinach lobby, if there is one, needs some good PR to get people back on the spinach bandwagon, I'd like to volunteer my services. I guess because I can't have it right now, I am craving it like mad--some chopped garlic sauteed in olive oil, pine nuts, raisins and a big pile o' the dark green deliciousness.

But since there are few things in this world I like less than kidney failure and diarrhea (which reminds me, the word "diarrheal" has been bandied about quite bit, as in"bloody diarrheal illness." I thought it was just "diarrhea.") I guess I will have to stick with baby carrots and baby tomatoes, the other packaged vegetables of the terminally lazy yet somewhat health conscious people like myself and wait for the day that spinach's good name is restored.