[Sca-cooks] spinach quantities

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phlip:
>Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
>
>  Can those who have cooked spinach for feasts, give me a good
>>  idea of how much spinach per person-- or how many people per case of
>>  spinach? I'm thinking one bunch of spinach might serve 3-4 diners.
>>
>
>Well, I've never cooked it for feast, but I can guarantee that Margali, Rob,
>and I plan on a bunch apiece, that's 1 pound, each, for dinner. Now, I'll
>admit, most people don't like it as much as we do, but I can't really see a
>pound of cooked spinach being enough for more that two people, three, maybe,
>if one of them hates it and won't eat it.
>
>If used as a salad green, you can use it as you would any green, but once
>cooked, it really does almost vanish.

FWIW, "Food For Fifty", which, in spite of occasionally providing the
weirdest-looking data you could imagine, is generally pretty
accurate, especially when large group dynamics are taken into
account, says this:

3 oz per person EP (edible portion, in other words, after trimming,
etc.), 1 lb. AP (as purchased) = .88 lb EP, 12 lbs AP = 50 servings
cooked or raw, 4-5 lbs = 50 servings for salad.

It's unclear whether the spinach as measured for salad is intended to
be mixed with a lot of other stuff. As for the other quantities, yes,
many people, such as Phlip, Rob, Margali, and even myself, will
cheerfully eat three times that much spinach. Others will eat less or
none, and when you're dealing with large numbers of people, these
numbers will probably turn out to be fairly accurate, if they're
anything like the rest of the data the book supplies.

Yes, spinach loses a lot of volume in the cooking process. It also
loses some mass to water loss, but not as dramatically as you might
think to look at it before and after cooking; a lot of that is simply
gravity compression when it becomes tender: spinach is curly stuff.

Adamantius, who had some surprisingly lovely shredded, sauteed kale
the other night (olive oil, salt, and mondo garlic)