Spinach

But that's not what made this Popeye grow to more than 50 feet tall. He's full of gas (not from the spinach) from 7,500 cubic feet of helium pumped into him in a test yesterday at the Art Museum before kids from St. Francis Xavier Elementary School. Popeye will appear in the Channel 6 Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Scientists have found a new use for spinach - electronic components that might one day be used for high-resolution video imaging, ultra-fast switching, logic devices and solar-power generation. A pair of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee announced their first successful experiments in spinach electronics Monday at a meeting of the American Physical Society. The scientists say that a protein in spinach has been exquisitely fashioned by evolution to turn photons from the sun into electrical energy.

Nancy S. Bryson is former general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Michael T. Roberts is former director of the National Agricultural Law Center Nutrition and taste have raised consumer demand for spinach, and the subsequent favorable farm returns have boded well for the crop's future. However, this good news balances on one fundamental fulcrum: that the spinach available at markets, restaurants and salad bars is safe to eat. The discovery of E. coli 0157:H7 in spinach showcases the narrowness of that fulcrum with a gap in the food-safety system.

The fall spinach season in South Jersey may well come off without a hitch, as at least one farmer has started harvesting and the Food and Drug Administration yesterday narrowed its warning on fresh spinach to a single California company's products. Pete Scapellato, a Vineland farmer who has had spinach this year earlier than most other New Jersey farmers, said the season started slowly but has gotten busy. Scapellato said he was not sure how quickly people would go back to buying spinach after the outbreak of a strain of E. coli that sickened 187 in 26 states.

Spinach could use a little good PR. Even though warnings from September's deadly E. coli outbreak have been lifted, the leafy vegetable still suffers from an image problem. It's enough to make the Verdelli clan, Pennsylvania's first family of spinach, dream of signing up Phillie Ryan Howard as a pitchman for the vitamin-packed vegetable. For now, Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff will have to do. Wolff made a "goodwill" tour of the Verdelli Farms spinach processing plant - the largest on the East Coast - on Thanksgiving eve to give a boost to the maligned green.

RALEIGH, N.C. - A recall of bagged spinach prompted by tests in North Carolina has expanded to additional states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and product brand names. Lancaster Foods of Jessup, Md., announced on Friday the voluntary recall includes spinach sold under the names Krisp-Pak, Lancaster Fresh, Giant, and America's Choice. The produce is sold in 8-, 10- and 12-ounce packages with "best enjoyed by" dates of June 19 through 27. The recall also includes spinach sold in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware.

Do you say "yuck" or "yum" when you see spinach on the menu? Although I'm of the yum persuasion, to many people spinach is, at best, mundane and hardly a vegetable of romance. Despite the fact that Popeye ate spinach to gain strength, it is a vegetable often despised by children. It didn't help that, because of its high vitamin and iron content, spinach was "shoveled into [British] children as if their survival depended on it," according to culinarian Jane Grigson. Yet, in many countries and cuisines, spinach is cherished for its subtle, faintly bittersweet taste and arresting deep-green color.

Liver is easy to hate, as are Brussels sprouts, rutabaga, turnips and spinach. Certain foods, it seems, elicit negative reactions so effortlessly that people feel justified in rejecting them - even without knowing how they taste. Just tell your children that green pasta gets its color from spinach, or that the white cubes in their favorite chicken soup are parsnip, and watch their appetites switch off. Even though spinach pasta doesn't taste anything like spinach, and the soup is the same one they've always liked, the negative power of the offending ingredient is enough to provoke an onslaught of vegaphobia.

Horseradish gives special texture and tang to many dishes. To salute this ancient root, I've created a simple glazed tuna steak with horseradish. Sauteed new potatoes with spinach complete the meal.   Hot Glazed Tuna Steak Makes 2 servings 21/2 tablespoons orange marmalade 1 tablespoon prepared horseradish 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard 2 teaspoons olive oil 3/4 pound fresh tuna steak Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1. Mix marmalade, horseradish and mustard together.

Among more exotic varieties of greens, mustard spinach, water spinach (with slender, pointed leaves), and chrysanthemum greens (all Asian, the latter an edible kin to the familiar floral type) are tender enough to mix raw in salads or use as last-minute additions to stir-fries or soups. Mizuna (Japanese mustard greens) have sawtooth leaves and a mustard tang used to accent mesclun mix or soup. Tatsoi (Chinese flat cabbage or spinach mustard) is kin to bok choy, with spoon-shaped leaves and a spinachlike flavor.

Craig: I had a number of great bites this week — including the season's first al fresco tacos al pastor from Los Taquitos de Puebla, which can only mean one thing: the return of the Head House Farmer's Market … what a joy! Here ares some other great flavors that make up this week's Crumb Tracker Quiz. (1) spinach gnocchi with ricotta salata; (2) peanut butter ice cream double-chocolate chip cookie sandwich (3) artisanal ham plate (with Finchville Farms sugar-cured country ham from Kentucky, with drop biscuits, honey butter and green tomato marmalade (people, this is a "wow" ham if there ever was one)

16 ounces fresh baby spinach or 1 (12-ounce) bag thawed frozen leaf spinach 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 onion, preferably Vidalia, finely chopped 6 ounces mixed mushrooms (such as cremini, chanterelle, morel, shitakes, white button) thinly sliced 1 clove garlic, very finely chopped 1/3 cup heavy cream 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 large eggs 2 tablespoons finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano chees (?

Horseradish gives special texture and tang to many dishes. To salute this ancient root, I've created a simple glazed tuna steak with horseradish. Sauteed new potatoes with spinach complete the meal.   Hot Glazed Tuna Steak Makes 2 servings 21/2 tablespoons orange marmalade 1 tablespoon prepared horseradish 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard 2 teaspoons olive oil 3/4 pound fresh tuna steak Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1. Mix marmalade, horseradish and mustard together.

TOKYO - At a bustling Tokyo supermarket Sunday, wary shoppers avoided one particular bin of spinach. The produce came from Ibaraki prefecture in the northeast, where radiation was found in spinach grown up to 75 miles from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Another bin of spinach - labeled as being from Chiba prefecture, west of Tokyo - was sold out. "It's a little hard to say this, but I won't buy vegetables from Fukushima and that area," said shopper Yukihiro Sato, 75. From corner stores to Tokyo's vast Tsukiji fish market, Japanese shoppers picked groceries with care Sunday after the discovery of contamination in spinach and milk fanned fears about the safety of this crowded country's food supply.

FUKUSHIMA, Japan - In the first sign that contamination from Japan's stricken nuclear complex had seeped into the food chain, officials said Saturday that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the tsunami-crippled facility exceeded government safety limits. Minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine also were found in tap water Friday in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan - although experts said none of those tests showed any health risks. The Health Ministry also said that radioactive iodine slightly above government safety limits was found in drinking water at one point Thursday in a sampling from Fukushima prefecture, the site of the nuclear plant, but later tests showed the level had fallen again.

RALEIGH, N.C. - A recall of bagged spinach prompted by tests in North Carolina has expanded to additional states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and product brand names. Lancaster Foods of Jessup, Md., announced on Friday the voluntary recall includes spinach sold under the names Krisp-Pak, Lancaster Fresh, Giant, and America's Choice. The produce is sold in 8-, 10- and 12-ounce packages with "best enjoyed by" dates of June 19 through 27. The recall also includes spinach sold in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware.

I approach each season as an opportunity to feast on new flavors. So while I am sad to see fresh tomatoes and peppers leave my family's table (just as I am sad to see my summer tan fade), I am equally happy to enter into the heart of autumn's bounty. Rainbow chard; huge collards; tender spinach; delicate and crispy lettuces; purple, green, and savoy cabbages; brussels sprouts; cauliflower; broccoli; and various delightful potatoes are all still available from local fields and gardens.

Were it located in the genteel wilds of Birchrunville, Chester County, say, or Malvern, even, green farmlands lapping at the doorstep, Osteria's poignant gesture to fresh and local might not be that much worth the noting. But for those who haven't had occasion to visit, let us set the scene: The casual sister to Marc Vetri's eponymous Vetri is just a handful of blocks north on Broad Street from Vine, though still south of Temple University, which is to say in a stretch of faded urbanity to which the noun revival cannot (yet)

Among more exotic varieties of greens, mustard spinach, water spinach (with slender, pointed leaves), and chrysanthemum greens (all Asian, the latter an edible kin to the familiar floral type) are tender enough to mix raw in salads or use as last-minute additions to stir-fries or soups. Mizuna (Japanese mustard greens) have sawtooth leaves and a mustard tang used to accent mesclun mix or soup. Tatsoi (Chinese flat cabbage or spinach mustard) is kin to bok choy, with spoon-shaped leaves and a spinachlike flavor.