Green Lies: It's Spinach!

"I only like spinach." Now that's not a statement you hear often from a child. But for several months, that assertion escaped the lips of both my children more times than I care to recount.

It was always a response to "What kind of leaf is that, Mommy?" If I answered chard, kale, or any green other than spinach, their little noses wrinkled, eyes scrunched, and they would say in annoying unison, "I only like spinach."

Fine! So, I told little green lies. It was all spinach! When I had rough-chopped kale mixed into creamy risotto, when I served oven-roasted tomatoes over a bed of chard, when I chopped beet greens into minestrone...it was all spinach.

We have mercifully moved past that madness and I can finally tell the truth about all of the fabulous greens they are eating. Still, spinach does grace our dinner table at least once a week. And one of my favorites was how I served it tonight: in a salad. Baby spinach leaves, thinly sliced fennel bulbs and d'anjou pears, chopped pecans, dried cherries, flecks of chevre with a dousing of olive oil and a syrupy balsamic.

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