Daily Grind :)

Well, I don't use this little gadget daily. In fact I haven't used it in a long time. I keep it around because my son uses it. It's a small rotary grinder which I bought for the sole purpose of grinding nuts, most specifically, hazelnuts. I was taking a series of cooking courses years ago and the teacher highly recommended this kitchen tool, used it in a lot of her cooking and just "happened" to sell it in her shop. I decided I had to have one!!

Fast forward 20 years. The other day I decided that I needed some breadcrumbs and since I had just used my blender, it was in the sink - dirty - and since I can be really lazy at times, I couldn't be bothered rinsing it out. I thought, I'll just use this little tool and grate a few bread crumbs. I never seem to "get it," though. It took me a lot longer to grind a cup of crumbs with this mill than it would have taken me to rinse out three blenders.

Anyway, it did give me time to think about the recipe that I had originally bought the grinder for. (For which I had originally bought the grinder) It was a recipe for spinach. Now, vegetables for me are usually side dishes. You know the dishes that round out a meal, but you don't fuss over that much. You just boil them a little, add some butter or lemon juice and they go with the main part of the meal that you have spent all your time preparing.

However, for some reason years ago, I felt that I needed to make this spinach side dish, and I made it often, even though it took ages to make and could be eaten in about a minute. It's spinach with hazelnuts and it goes like this:

1. Clean a bunch of fresh spinach. This usually takes me about 10-15 mins because I rinse every leaf.

2. Place a cup of hazelnuts on a cookie sheet and put them in an oven at 350F to toast for about 15mins.

3. Take out the nuts and allow them to cool a little. Then with a tea towel rub each nut to remove the skin. You will also have a very messy tea towel at the end of this.

4. Grind the nuts in the the small nut grinder - another 15 mins.

5. Steam the spinach. Put the cooked spinach in a food processor and grind. Add 2 tablespoons cream, 1 tablespoon butter and a squeeze of lemon juice.

6. Place in a bowl and top with the nuts.

It looks lovely, tastes great, but takes about an hour to make. It dirties a pot, a blender, a cookie sheet, tea towel and various other implements, which then have to be cleaned.

No wonder Popeye just squeezed his spinach out of a can!!

Have a wonderful day!!