Local foods: frozen spinach

This is hardly a unique local food, either -- similar to the garlic and dried mushrooms that I wrote about a few days ago.

But this iteration surprised me.  In the U.S., frozen spinach came traditionally in sometimes awful blocks (in traditional cardboard packaging), but with the advent of ubiquitous plastic packaging (and even steam-in-the-bag technology), it's more common as either chopped or leaf spinach in bags, although it's still around in boxes, too, probably now much better waxed to preserve quality.

Normally, what I buy, whether organic or conventional, looks something like this photo from Kitchn, here from a box, I'm noticing.

Image credit: Faith Durand, Kitchn

So, wanting to add something to my vegetable backups in the freezer, I bought these at our local Metro market.  They're a store brand:  Irresistibles Life Smart/Mieux-être, which is a low-sodium, low-sugar, low-fat line.  I've bought chicken broth, tomatoes, beans, etc. with this labeling, so thought, based on the picture, that it would be what I'd consider normal bagged chopped spinach.

I was surprised at what was in the bag:  frozen spinach "haystacks"  -- remarkable.

round "haystacks" of frozen spinach.

I've never seen anything quite like that.  And it was very finely chopped in texture-- close to being minced if not almost pureed, when cooked.  Interesting!  Decent, sort of, for an emergency soup addition.  I'll have to test a couple of other sorts.  The fresh spinach is usually quite good -- imported from the U.S. or Mexico, possibly from BC greenhouse growers, too.

I'm trying to remember if I've bought frozen spinach in other places that we've had kitchens where I cooked routinely;  the availability of fresh spinach around the world (my preference) is probably why I'm not remembering anything.