Magic Spinach Water

29. Drink the spinach water.

This was a new and illuminating rule for me. Apparently, the water in which you cook your vegetables retains much of the nutrients of the vegetables themselves. I had no idea. So Pollan suggests saving it and adding it to future dishes - boom, instant nutrient boost.

To be perfectly honest, I haven't been great at following this rule. I once saved the water in which I had steamed some broccoli... and then promptly let it sit in the refrigerator for several weeks. And that's about as proactive as I've gotten on this rule.

In my defense, I very rarely steam vegetables. I'm really much more of a grill/sautee kind of a gal. But that's no excuse; I can and should do better. A part of it is I wouldn't know what to do with my "spinach water" even if I had some. Pollan says it can be added to "sauces and soups," but as far as I'm concerned, that's way too vague to be helpful. So I'm giving a little love to this rule and trying to pay attention to ways I can "save the spinach water."

For starters, it occured to me that I could have thrown a little veggie water into the dish I made for lunches this week. Too late, of course - maybe next time. And in the meantime, I'm going to share the recipe anyway, because it was a)delicious, b) easy and c) healthy.

I took a picture of my own lentils, but it didn't turn out great. Green collard greens + green lentils + grey smoked turkey = not super photogenic (but still delicious). But it looks and tastes kind of like this. Mmmmm. Image courtesy of The Wednesday Chef, who, by the way, recommends using bacon rather than turkey and adding onions and balsamic vinegar. Which would probably also be good.

COLLARD GREENS WITH SMOKED TURKEY AND LENTILS
Ingredients
•3-5 cups of collard greens, stemmed and cut into strips

**note: I ran out of collard greens halfway through and switched to chard, which tasted just as good.**

•1 cup green lentils
•1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
•1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste (read: a crapload)

Instructions
•Combine ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
•Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes.

And that's it! So easy. So good. And it would be equally easy to replace a little of that water with leftover vegetable water instead.

And while I'm thinking about it, here's a few other ways I can think of to add veggie-water to my cooking:

• Homemade dips, like ranch, or spinach and artichoke - then when you dip carrots or celery in it, you get DOUBLE the veggie magic.


• Salad dressings. What if you threw a little bit of veggie-water into a homemade vinaigrette?


• Rice, quinoa and other grains - just throw it back in the water. That would work, wouldn't it? It would get absorbed back into the grain. And, I'll bet, would kick the flavor way up too.

So that's a start. And if anyone can think of other ways to get creative with the spinach water, I'm all ears.