We have been wallowing in spinach heaven lately.

This is because some of our spinach wintered over under that lovely coverlet of snow and leapt out of the ground as soon as the soil thawed. We have been eating heartily on it for a month and a half. That means, of course, that I have had to be creative about preparing it.

You might remember last week about how I added shredded spinach to curried eggs. A couple weeks before that, we offered a spinach-artichoke dip here. That dip prompted me to make a variation on creamed spinach that turned out very well. I took the basic dip recipe but loaded it up with at least twice as much spinach, as much as it would take and still bake until bubbly. I sprinkled more Parmesan on top and it tasted so good.

I also like spinach salad. Piles of torn-up spinach with crumbled fried bacon sprinkled in along with a couple of finely chopped hard-boiled eggs simply dressed with vinaigrette is a substantial dish.

Last fall, we were getting just a mite tired of summer squash and zucchini, so I heaved quite a lot of it into the oven, chopped coarsely and lightly drizzled with olive oil, and roasted it until it was tender. Then I scraped it into freezer bags. We are now down to the last couple of bags, and we ate one bag thawed out in a saute pan with a little chopped onion added and a few handfuls of shredded spinach stirred in until it was wilted. It was pretty – yellow and bright green – and the squash took the edge off the spinach.

This week, prompted by leftover Spanish rice, I made a soup. I softened up some onions in oil, added some garlic, added broth (mine was turkey but you could use beef or chicken or even merely water) and then added a huge pile of chopped spinach. When it softened, I added the Spanish rice. After that it was just a matter of tasting it, adding salt, pepper and additional chili powder, but you could season it in any way you like.

If there was a secret to these dishes, it was having on hand a big old bag of washed spinach that I had picked over, removing the heavy stem and rib from the larger leaves, and torn up so it was ready to use when I felt like it.

Our newly planted spinach is a month old now and the batch that wintered over is going to seed. We will keep on planting spinach all summer long so we will have new fresh into the fall. If you are one of the many people planting a garden this year for the first time, bear in mind that you can plant a new, small patch of spinach about every two weeks, so that you have fresh spinach to add whenever you wish to any dish you think might benefit from it.

Spinach Salad

Fresh washed spinach, four to five ounces per person

2 slices of bacon per person, fried and crumbled

Half a hard-boiled egg per person, chopped finely

Oil and vinegar or vinaigrette or Italian dressing

Tear the spinach into bite-size pieces and put into a shallow bowl. Sprinkle the bacon and hard-boiled egg onto the spinach and just before serving, drizzle all over with the oil and vinegar or salad dressing, toss lightly and serve.