Spinach makes it healthy…

Today we were being exceptionally lazy, but we managed to drag ourselves out of the house to do a bit of grocery shopping. We went up to the local Food Lion and walked around for a bit… threw some things into the cart… but really didn’t find anything that we were super excited about.

However, this was about the time that the universe threw us a bone. Turns out, that Food Lion was doing a thing where if you bought $35 worth of groceries, and at least one Kraft product, you’d get a free “Southern Living: Our Best Party Foods” magazine.

As we loaded our random groceries into the car and left the parking lot, I turned to Virginia and said “We’re going to Martin’s to get bacon, so before we get there, find something in that magazine that we can make tonight, and put on the blog, since we haven’t done that in a while. (Of course, when we got back to the house, I remembered that we had taken pictures of another kitchen adventure that never got posted… so… that’s new tonight as well) So.. without further ado, here’s the recipe that Virginia picked from the magazine.

Sausage, Bean, and Spinach Dip

Ingredient list:

• 1 Sweet Onion, Diced
• 1 Red Bell Pepper, Diced
• 1 LB Hot Ground Pork Sausage
• 2 Garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 8oz package cream cheese, softened
• 1 6oz package fresh baby spinach, chopped
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 15oz can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• vehicles for the dip (corn chips, pretzel rods, crackers, etc)

So, obviously, step 1 is to prepare everything as described in the ingredient list. chop, dice, mince, and measure.

 

After everything is chopped and measured, preheat the oven to 375, grab a pan, and get the pan on a burner up to medium high heat. Toss in your sausage, onion and peppers until the sausage is browned, and the onions and peppers are softened.

Now, you can add your garlic and thyme… cook for a minute… then add your white wine.

 

Cook until the liquid is evaporated, then add the cream cheese, stirring constantly.

After the cream cheese is mixed in, add the spinach and the salt and cook, while stirring constantly. The spinach will wilt nicely, and thins will blend together nicely. After about 2 minutes, add the drained and rinsed beans. After another minute or so, pour everything out of the pan, into a small baking dish.

 

Top it all with your parmesan cheese, and toss it into the oven for 18-20 minutes.

A few minutes later, you have a tray of steaming, happy awesomeness.

We had ours on some lovely Triscuit crackers…

All in all… this was a pretty awesome recipe. We had some Sweet Italian Sausage sitting the the freezer, so that’s what we used… it would have better with a spicier sausage, but I think that spicy Italian sausage is the way to go. With all of the other flavors, the fennel in the Italian sausage is a nice addition.