Savoy-Leaf Type Spinach

[BreezyCooking]

Does anyone here besides me miss it?

Yes, yes, I know it was/is a pain in the you-know-what to clean because of all those thick wrinkles - but it's also all those thick wrinkles that make me love it. (And unfortunately it was all those thick wrinkles that caused its marketable demise. . . .)

All the limp wan "baby" flat-leaf spinach that has taken the commercial market by storm is just hunky-dory for cooked spinach & as far as a mixed green salad, but the savoy-leaf is & always has been my hands-down favorite for a spinach salad. Whether with hard-boiled egg, bacon, sliced fresh mushrooms & blue cheese dressing; or with a hot bacon dressing to just wilt it - savoy-leaf is A-1. The spinach flavor is more intense, & those "wrinkles" give a real crunch & heft to a salad - even under hot dressing. The flat leaf stuff just plasters together when used alone in a salad, like wet grass.

Unfortunately, while I have & do grow it myself, when I have a craving for it & don't have any in the garden, the markets don't have it either anymore. All I can say is - WAAAAHHHH!

[silentmeow]

I still see it here in the MI groceries but the cost is prohibitive!

[justplainbill]

It's pretty scarce. If I'm lucky I get some in the spring time. With spinach, seems to me that the darker the leaf color the more intense the flavor. For cooking, I lean towards kale or chard over the pale flat leaf spinach.

[BreezyCooking]

And unfortunately it's not easy to grow here in Virginia. Our springs & falls run from extremely unpredictable to almost nonexistent. We can run from 90 degrees to frost - & vice versa - in a nanosecond. Real cool-weather crops are definitely a hit-or-miss proposition in most cases.

[Loprraine]

I have one store that still carries it. It's cheaper for me to buy it than the baby spinach, which runs $6.99 lb.