I'm Popeye The Sailor?

For 59 years I managed to stay away from eating spinach, although it's possible my Mom slipped some baby food spinach in when I couldn't say, "no way." It's not just the taste of spinach, but let's be honest, it looks awful too.  I know, they say you can't tell a book by it cover, but in this case that does not apply.

The cartoon character, "Popeye The Sailor", was an animated cartoon that was on television in 1960.  Believe it or not, the first episode ran September 1, 1960, thirteen days after I was born. which is why we have so much in common, we're the same age! The  Popeye character originally started though in 1933 in what they called "theatrical shorts" (cartoons) and it was owned by Paramount Pictures.

For those of you so young you can only say you heard of the sixties, Popeye was kind of a scrawny looking sailor with big arms that got bigger when he was in trouble.  Somehow, a can of "tasty" spinach would pop out and he would eat the whole can immediately. (this had to be enough to turn off little kids immediately, because it didn't look good on television either) However, eating spinach gave him super strength and he was able to save his girlfriend, Olive Oyl (yes, her real name) from his rival the evil Brutus. (no relation to the Julius Caesar "Brutus."}Brutus's name was changed to the much more serious "Bluto." There was some infringement problems with the popular name "Bluto", so they had to introduce the new evil guy, who they called "Brutus." (I'm not making this up)

Back to the spinach from my history lesson. I am now eating spinach, but not straight out of the can. My wife has put it in ziti, spaghetti, and lasagna. The secret to eating spinach is to mix it in with pasta or sauce so it dilutes the taste of the spinach. And, whatever you do, don't look at what you're eating!

Do I like it? I like the meal and I know the spinach is there, but I ignore it. I just hope she doesn't try to sneak it in to chicken especially chicken parmesan. I keep checking my arms in the mirror, so far I haven't seen any change. How much of this stuff do you have to eat?