Spinach and Rucola

Our vegetable garden is thriving. It is now a colorful corner. We are all proud of ourselves!

Does that mean we all have green thumbs? Well, I would say so.

Since the girls love spinach, we have decided to plant it. Since we saw some rucola seeds beside the spinach seeds, we plucked out one pack, too. Just to add more greens on our table.

We scattered the spinach seeds in the corner beside the carrort; and planted the rucola near the thyme. In just a few days, they were growing so fast. Almost overwhelming the other plants.

After two weeks, we were ready to harvest. But first, I had to admit to my first gardening mistake: we planted the spinach and the rucola too close together that they dont have enough space to grow more! My husband told me he forgot to inform me that we should scatter those seeds in a bigger lot area so that they could thrive better.

Well, it is too late. So, to atone to my gardening 'sin', I decided to just harvest them and use them in our meals almost everyday so that they would have room to grow. That means, I have to improvise especially with the spinach.

With rucola salad, the girls could eat them just freshly picked. But they love it when I add some apple slices and some drops of olive oil, wine vinegar, with salt and pepper. Our rucola just tastes better! I guess everything just tastes better when you worked for it.

What to do with our spinach? I used the leaves together with our left-over noodles, ala lasagna. First I buttered the baking tin, placed a bed of spinach, added the noodles, another bed of spinach, then noodles and some cream cheese, seasoned it with salt and pepper and topped it with gratin cheese and more spinach. I baked this mixture for 20 minutes. Result? The kids loved it. Though they said I should have added more cream cheese.

So now the garden is sprouting more spinach. I have given the neighbors a bunch; the rest I might just freeze them. Meanwhile, I am accepting recipe suggestions for spinach!