preserving spinach

I thought I would let you in on a great tip I have started doing with the big bags of spinach I buy at Costco. The smaller bags at the store are pretty expensive, these are HUGE bags and they are around $4.00. You gotta LOVE a great deal. We use quite a bit of spinach-- we put it in salads and our smoothies (we make smoothies almost everyday) but even though we use it a lot I always ended up throwing so much away- it just didn't stay good for very long. So one day I was at costco and I saw a really nice lady getting a bag of this spinach, so I decided to ask her if she knew any way to keep it from going bad so fast. She spoke really broken English, so I am not positive what she was saying- but I understood that you didn't have to rinse it first-- she showed me where it says that on the package & I understood that she used a paper towel. So here is what I came up with--- and it has worked so great for us so here we go..



cut open the bag like this and let it all spill out.... it makes it a lot easier to get out because the bag has a zip lock at the top and it's not a big enough opening.. doesn't that look lovely!!!



next take a ziplock gallon bag and put 2 paper towels inside-- I like to use the select a size, they fit perfect. I have found it is easier to put one paper towel in the bag- fill it with spinach & then stuff the other paper towel in on the other side It sounds complicated, but it's not you'll see what I mean when you start filling the bags....



after you have the bag filled with the spinach & a paper towel on both sides of the bag- press out all the air you can and zip the bag closed. It's important to get as much air out as you can



out of one large bag of spinach -- you will get 4-5 gallon zip lock bags full of spinach. It will last in the fridge for 4-5 weeks. I love this tip.. it has saved us so much $ and the frustration of having it go bad before we could use it- I have a lot less waste by packing it this way..