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Some Kitchen Kinks: Spinach

Spinach. This vegetable is a great A resource in cold weather when green vegetables are scarce.

The common spinach, which is the sort usually met with in gardens or markets, goes to seed quickly in hot weather, but New Zealand spinach, which is a very different plant from ordinary spinach and far less well known in the United States, yields tender greens all summer. The shoots should be cut regularly; if not, the old shoots become tough and rank flavored.

Spinach has little food value, but its refreshing and slightly laxative qualities make it a valuable adjunct to the more substantial foods. It contains little starch and only a suggestion of sugar, and is therefore one of the vegetables that physicians include in the bill of fare of many invalids who require a diet without these carbohydrates.

Like most other vegetables, it is rarely cooked to perfection, yet it is not difficult to prepare. Except for special reasons the simplest methods are the best for this vegetable. No matter how cheap the raw spinach may be, it is always expensive in two things-labor and butter. It takes a good deal of time, water, and patience to wash it clean, and no other vegetable requires so much butter if it is to be at its best. Where strict economy must be practiced, sweet drippings from roast beef or chicken can be substituted for the butter.