For many it is Christmas Eve. Some might not celebrate Christmas or it is past the day, but here, where I am, it is Christmas Eve. It is Tuesday so normally I would have had a Nia class in the morning, but the Park and Recreation Department of San Jose took the day off so there was no Nia this morning. They also have instituted a very abbreviated Group Ex schedule so my Nia classes with the City of San Jose are done for the year. We will be back Thursday, January 2, 2014. (WHOA! 2014!) I have one more Nia class in Willow Glen this year and one more class this year that I am subbing for the YMCA. Then onto the next year! So today I had a very relaxing Christmas Eve Day. Probably thee most relaxing Christmas Eve Day I have had in a LONG time. It was nice. One thing I had to do today was make spinach dip. In my world this is a common party treat. I have been making it for as long as I can remember. Although I had not made it in a long time. I think I first heard about spinach dip when I worked at my first mortgage job in the mid ’80s. So that is a long time. Spinach dip seems pretty common and timeless.
One thing I notice over Thanksgiving when I made a quadruple batch was that the recipe calls for a 10 ounce package of frozen spinach. Well our big green friend now makes his frozen spinach in 9 ounces sizes. I thought that was funny. Then today as I happened to be READING the recipe I noticed something that had me saying, “WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!” The directions actually say to COOK the spinach. I have never heard of such a thing. I have NEVER cooked the spinach. And as I mentioned I have been making spinach dip for YEARS. Cook the spinach? Really?
I prefer the Knorr Vegetable soup mix. But one year I couldn’t find it ANYWHERE and I ended up with the SPRING Vegetable mix and that was awesome because it had mushrooms in it. Now I can’t find that. I have also used other soup mix and have not been as happy as when I use Knorr. But this “cooked” really made me laugh out loud. Here is the recipe I am sure many of you are familiar with:
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Knorr Spinach Dip
Ingredients
1 box (10 oz.) frozen chopped spinach, cooked, cooled and squeezed dry
1 container (16 oz.) sour cream
1 cup Hellmann’s® or Best Foods® Real Mayonnaise
1 package Knorr® Vegetable recipe mix
1 can (8 oz.) water chestnuts, drained and chopped (optional)
3 green onions, chopped (optional)
Directions
1. Combine all ingredients and chill about 2 hours. Serve with your favorite dippers to your favorite people.
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Also, for me, the water chestnuts are NOT optional! They are a requirement. In fact, to me, the are the best part. If you watch me getting some spinach dip you will probably see me pushing my cracker/bread/veggie through the dish just trying to get at that chunk of chestnut.
In addition to the change in weight of the spinach they also now package it in a plastic, which helped when squeezing the water out. After I squeeze the spinach it is all clumped together so I use forks to pull it a part.
So I have two main questions for you:
1) Do you COOK your spinach?
2) How do you squeeze all the water out of the frozen spinach? To me that is the worst part.
Let me know because I am soooooo curious.
And to all I say:
Terre Pruitt's Blog 