Spinach

I woke up this morning and took my Blood Glucose test (BG) and it came up an 84. For those of you who do not wonder about your BG levels every second of every day as I have for the past month, that is a number worth celebrating. I have to take a certain amount of insulin each night and increase that number each night until I have a BG level of 100 or less in the morning. Today was that morning.

The Heavens open up - Ahhhhhhhh

So tonight I will take the same units of insulin that I did last night and we'll see if it is a good number for me. Yesterday morning my BG level was 111 so I knew we were getting close.

I ate my breakfast as usual and then a few hours later I needed a snack. I didn't want to eat lunch yet, but I needed something to stick with me for a few hours because my husband and I are going to look at a house. So it kind of interrupts my meal schedule.

I open the fridge and see extra lean ground beef with todays date on it. Check. I see an onion already diced up in the fridge. Check. I see one pound of organic baby spinach. (What am I going to do with all this?) Check. Cheddar cheese already grated. Check. Eggs. Check.

I browned the ground beef with a lot of the chopped onion. I took two big handfuls of the spinach and roughly chopped them on the cutting board, heated up my non stick pan and tossed the spinach in there with a tiny bit of water to let it sizzle away. I then cracked two eggs into a bowl, tossed out one yolk and mixed it up.

Stir Spinach, chop the beef up in the pan. Stir beef. Remove spinach from heat because I started it too soon. Stir beef, stir beef, stir beef - done. Drain all of the liquid from the beef. Turn heat back on under spinach, add in eggs, stir quickly. Make sure the eggs are just barely done, nothing runny and add in a pinch of grated cheddar cheese, two tablespoons of beef mixture and eat. Man it was so good! Had I known it was going to be so good I would have taken some pictures of it.

It was real pretty though - Green spinach, Yellow eggs, Brown hamburger and a touch of Orange from the cheese.

I titled this post Spinach because I decided while I was eating that I needed to know the carb content in spinach since fresh spinach doesn't normally come with a nutrition label.

Here are some interesting facts about Spinach (Taken from the Spinach Words website.)

Spinach - 1 cup (7.5 oz)

These facts below are all based on one cup (7.5 oz)

Calories: 49

Protein: 6.0 gram - Around 49% of the caloric value of spinach comes from the plant proteins. This makes spinach the richest known source of protein of all plant foods. One cup of spinach provides 12% of recommended daily requirements of protein. (I had no idea!)

Fats: 1.1 gram

Carbohydrates: 7.3 grams - Which includes

Fiber: 5.1 gram - Despite its reputation, spinach is not a high fiber vegetable. The high protein level ensures that the fiber content is only moderate in comparison to most vegetables. This means that bowel irritations, flatulence, and so forth are rare or minor with spinach as compared to most other fruits, vegetables, grains or legumes. The complex carbohydrates in fiber are indigestible and therefore contribute no calories to your diet. Nonetheless, fiber still serves valuable health functions in the human body.

There are two types of fiber found in spinach:

Insoluble Fiber - This is approx. 80% of spinach's fiber content. Insoluble fiber provides bulk without calories, giving a full feeling in the stomach - very beneficial for weight management. Being indigestible, it passes through your digestive tracts, cleaning toxins in the process and exercising the bowel muscles for ongoing regularity, cancer prevention and general digestive health.

Soluble Fiber - This is approx. 20% of spinach's fiber content. Soluble fiber helps to lower elevated cholesterol levels and may be helpful in aiding the regulation of blood sugar levels.

Beta Carotene - The human body converts Beta Carotene into Vitamin A in the intestines and liver. Spinach is one of the richest sources of beta carotene. (Only carrots and parsley contain more.)

Iron - Spinach is one of the best plant sources of this essential trace mineral.



A few tidbits of trivia - also from the Spinach Word website.

Spinach has an undeserved reputation for being high in iron. In 1870, Dr. E von Wolf measured the iron content of spinach, but placed the decimal point in the wrong position. This overstated the iron content of spinach ten-fold. The mistake was not discovered until 67 years later, by German chemists. The myth of the high iron content of spinach is still being wrongfully yet widely circulated today.

Spinach is best eaten fresh. It loses nutritional properties with each passing day. Although refrigeration slows the deterioration, half of the major nutrients are lost by the eighth day after harvest. (For long term storage, freeze while fresh.) When fresh, it has crisp leaves. As they deteriorate, the leaves turn limp.

"Florentine" is a common part of names of recipes where spinach is a significant ingredient. Florence in Italy was the home town of Catherine de Medici, a lover of spinach, who married the King of France in the 16th century.

In the 1930's U.S. spinach growers credited Popeye with a 33% increase in domestic spinach consumption - a welcome boost to an industry during the depression era.

The spinach growing town of Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye in 1937.


Now what else am I going to do with this pound of spinach? (one pound minus what I've eaten lol) I've had a few salads and now an egg dish. Guess I'm going to need to start looking up recipes. I bought so much spinach because I was tired of my lettuce going bad so quickly. I eat salads all the time but geez, my lettuce isn't lasting three days sometimes.


Hope you've had a great weekend!
Kristin