Several Supper Suggestions to Savor Spring Spinach OR Why we're having frozen pizza with black olives and spinach for dinner

Most weeks, I make tentative dinner menu for each night of the week. It's not an elaborate process, I just jot down four - six entrees. Most nights I cook dinner, and so it simplifies my life to plan ahead in this way. One less thing to think about! I am married to a farmer, so dinner always centers around what's coming out of the garden. If there is one thing coming on strong, then we are happy to eat ridiculous amounts that vegetable night after night. It's just what we do.

As springtime yields to summer, variety arrives. But right now, it's all about the spinach. The spinach is not only happening, the patch is--dare I say--opulent with oversized leathery leaves, which means we are devouring big bags of spinach everyday until it sends up its seed stalks. 

This week's list of dinner menu items looked something like:
--spinach soufflé (made this, it's a family favorite--I use the Joy of Cooking recipe but I double it),
--spinach quiche (another egg recipe, we're egg customers of neighbors Rebecca and Barb, but this got axed from thus week's menu--I've been too busy/lazy to do the crust),
--steamed spinach with orzo browned in toasted garlic and kale tops (added plenty of Parmesan to this--yum),
--spinach with lamb sausage over rice (haven't made this yet, but we buy artisan LinkLab sausage, made in Seattle, from 2nd Street Wine Shop),
--Rockwell beans with spinach (Chris froze more quarts of this local heirloom as shelly beans than I could count), and last but not least,
--ramen soup with, yes, you guessed it, lots of spinach.

But this evening, I am tired! I'm training for a half marathon so started my Sunday with a six-mile run. I headed up to our property and spent about four hours with our land partners staking out the lot sites in what will become Upper Langley Affordable Housing Community. Chris has been working like crazy getting the gardens going and finishing his movie, Dancing with Thoreau, while also overseeing the heavy equipment operators working on our housing project.

So tonight, we bought a frozen cheese pizza from The Goose, our community grocer, which we will lovingly adulterate with sliced black olives and the spinach Chris brought in, still dripping wet with rainfall.