How to Screw Up Creamed Spinach, Part Two

I guess I was a bit discombobulated tonight. I'd left my Blackberry at Starbucks, or so I thought, and when I went back to look for it, it was nowhere to be found. A young boy said he thought he'd seen it on a pile of newspapers. I located the pile, but not the phone.

Then I burned my thumb trying to take some underdone frozen tortellini out of the toaster oven. I guess I should've used an oven mitt. My thumb now has a blister on it, and I use my thumb to type, so this post might be shorter than usual.

Now we get to the spinach. Mark Bittman's simple creamed spinach recipe directs one to parboil (is that the right term?) and finely chop the spinach before plunging it into a pan filled with melted butter and cream. Preoccupied with my Blackberry and all of the juicy E-mails someone was probably reading, with my thumb wrapped in a wet paper towel, I just didn't have the patience to boil water and put the spinach in there and chop it. So I just sauteed the spinach in some butter - well, more accurately, I first put a pan of butter on the burner and wondered why it wasn't melting, and then realized I'd turned on the wrong burner - and then poured a bunch of cream in the pan.

I now had a bunch of sauteed spinach leaves and a large puddle of unabsorbed, watery cream. I would have taken a picture of this disaster for you, but as I mentioned before, I am no longer in possession of my Blackberry. (I use the Blackberry camera to take these unappetizing photos.)

(Fortunately, someone just called my home phone to say that they found it on the sidewalk outside Safeway.)

ETA: I just realized that I never posted "How to Screw Up Creamed Spinach, Part One." So I guess I'll stick it in right here. The last time I attempted to make Mark Bittman's creamed spinach, I tried to get creative and added garam masala, instead of nutmeg, for an ostensibly Indian flavor. I then dusted the spinach generously with black pepper. When I tried it, I almost coughed. I mean, I know I put in a good amount of pepper, but this was almost unpalatable. I looked at the list of ingredients on the garam masala jar - the second ingredient was black pepper.