Spinach saga

I am currently on a very limited diet of basically green vegetables, a few almonds and walnuts, half a carrot, half a sweet potato, a piece of free-range (skinless) chicken and two eggs, a glass of green juice (kale, celery, ginger, parsley, cucumber, coriander, apple) - strictly no white potatoes, aubergines or tomatoes. Hmm. Next time you see me, you will also want to go on this nutrition plan.

 Spinach is the Houdini of leafy greens - you start off with a big potful and end up with two tablespoons of wilted mush - so I thought I would take the easy way out and buy one of those bulk packs of ready washed and chopped spinach from the supermarket. The bag was enormous (1kg) and stuffed so full I don't know how they closed it at the packing factory.

To open it, I stabbed it joyously with a knife, and a virtual explosion of chopped spinach jack-in-the-boxed all over the kitchen counter. It seemed as though it would never end as I shook out pile after pile of finely shredded greenery and still the bag was tightly packed. I stuffed as much as I could into the cooking pot, thinking back to the fairytale I used to read the kids about the magic cooking pot that wouldn't stop pouring out porridge until it eventually filled the whole house. I grabbed two large-sized storage containers (those nice ones with the clip-on lids that hold just about everything that's in my fridge) and soon they were also filled. Still more in the bag! As a last resort, I clingwrapped the bag to contain the rest of the spinach and put that in the fridge with the rest. I'd still like to know how they closed it originally.

The sad part is that it will only produce about 3 cups of cooked spinach in the end, and it is taking up most of my fridge space. Looks like I'll have to plant some in the garden rather, so that I can store it on the stalk!