Spinach, Creamed & Otherwise…

It looks like the Walmart Great Value Brand of Frozen Chopped Spinach has the least amount of Sodium and is the cheapest of the three brands listed above. The calorie count per serving is slightly above the other two. The Bird Eye Brand at Target is the most expensive, because it is more expensive and the number of ounces is only 10, instead of 12.

I had left a “holding place” for Creamed Spinach & Otherwise. Not too long ago I made some good creamed spinach at home. Unfortunately, I don’t recall which ingredients I used. I think I used creamed cheese, some butter, garlic powder and the frozen spinach. I may have used some type of shredded cheese. Maybe an Italian blend.

But the thing that got me updating this spinach section was that I was looking through a cookbook that I bought at the Scotland County Library in Laurinburg yesterday. It only cost a dollar (plus whatever donation I gave for all the books I bought at the same time).

The book was Mr. Food “Every Day’s a Holiday Diabetic Cookbook.” As I started to look through the book, I was amazed that they didn’t seem to pay attention to the amount of sodium in their recipes. I saw a 300 mg and a 644 mg sodium amount. I was looking at a “Creamy Spinach Soup” recipe on page 44. It listed the Sodium in this soup as 499 mg.

Creamy Spinach Soup

Ingredients:

8 scallions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 cans (14 ounces each) vegetable broth
2 packages (10 ounces each) frozen spinach, thawed and well drained
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 cups low-fat (1%) milk
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

When I saw the almost 500 mg of sodium in this recipe, I looked closer at the ingredients, wondering why so high. The only two items that might have high sodium were the vegetable broth, and the frozen spinach. That got me looking for the sodium listed in frozen spinach. Now that I see that you can get frozen spinach for under 100 mg per serving, it makes me think I should try to find “low sodium” vegetable broth (I prefer chicken broth.) or try to make it at home and use less sodium.

Also when I looked at the above recipe, I thought, “this looks like a recipe for creamed spinach.” I then went to my AI and asked for a creamed spinach recipe and what… yeah, they are pretty much the same.

I wonder if tarragon would be as pleasant as nutmeg?