Spinach

This morning I knew I wanted to make soup for dinner--just not what kind.  Then I had a teenage flashback to the house my parents used to rent every summer in San Miguel, and the cook's cream of  fill in the blank soups.  I remember the carrot, the spinach, and the broccoli and all of them were out of this world.  Vegetables fresh from the market that morning, probably a pound of butter and cream, fresh herbs, and how can you possibly lose?

So with that in mind, today I made a fresh baby spinach soup.  Luckily I read the reviews where previous people had suggested how to take it from fish tank water bland, to damn good.  Done and done and it's the most beautiful fresh green color ever.  Not that nasty looking dark fatigue green of old frozen Birdseye spinach from your childhood....the kind that gagged you at the dinner table....and made your teeth feel weird afterwards like they'd been coated with something.  They had.  You weren't imagining things.  That was frozen spinach sliminess. 

I still momentarily freak when I see a big mound of cooked spinach out to dinner somewhere and I don't know how they've cooked it.  Did my mom teach you how to cook that because if so, I'm not eating it and if you really want to send me over the edge, mention a sliced hard boiled egg on top of that wad of sea kelp and I'm gone.  I'll be out the door in no time.

My worst nightmare....still.