This week’s spinach scare has impacted lunch rooms and dinner tables across the country. Even our small startribune.com kitchenette was abuzz.

Before the overabundance of bagged baby spinach, other greens competed for our palate. No, I’m not talking about iceberg lettuce. I’m talking about kale - tasty, tasty kale.

Kale is more than garnish for your dinner plate or accessory for your outdoor Halloween display, it’s a super-good-for-you superfood. This overlooked leafy friend is a great source of iron, calcium, vitamin C, Folic Acid, vitamin K and Carotenoids (which provide vitamin A). It actually tastes sweeter after a frost.

Some folks sautee it with garlic and herbs. Others chop it and add it to their soups and stews. The more adventurous among us eat it raw in salads. Just Wash, rip, and drizzle with your favorite dressing. Before adding your cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, or croutons, put your hands in the bowl and massage the dressing into your greens until they start to absorb the oil.

The kale will have more body and more texture than your slimey old spinach salad. And you won’t have to worry about a weekend with E. coli.

With five days of hot and dry weather on the way, I decided to give up on my greens. On the verge of bitterness, I couldn’t baby the lettuces in the air conditioned house for another weekend. The planter is home to an ant colony and the cats are obsessed with digging in dirt. Not a good combination.

So, before heading to the office this morning, I picked through the wilting leaves. Then I garnished the last of my greens with herbs and borage flowers and made a salad of stars.

I even pulled a few “baby” carrots for color (the first of the season — yay!).

As expected, every bite of my lunch was bitter, but beautiful.

I love carrots. Crunchy, sweet and vitamin-packed, the carrot is the perfect veggie. Cooked or raw, I could eat carrots until I turned orange with beta-carotene.

(Note: Keep your nasty bag of baby carrots away from me – I’m an old school carrot sticks kinda girl. Didja know store-bought baby carrots are actually eight-inch carrots in disguise? After these giants are harvested from the field, they are chopped into small pieces, peeled, and “polished.”)

As my garden grew, I was filled with carrot concerns. Are they planted too close together? Are they getting too much sun? Too much water?

When I dug up the carrot bed for cool season crops, I was surprised by my bounty of bite-sized veggies. I removed their green tops, gave them a quick scrub, then shared my harvest with friends and family.

A month later, I’m still munching and crunching my homegrown baby carrots.

This late in the growing season, people start to think about putting their gardens to bed. Corn is turning brown. Cukes are tired. Tomatoes make a mad dash to the finish line with new green fruit.

Who could’ve guessed that my cool season crops would outgrow my carrot harvest? Arugula, kale, mustard, and broccoli rapini made the most of the rain - and my salad plate. I thin the bed before dinner and find twice as many greens the next morning for my bag lunch.

Sometimes I even find a rogue carrot or two.

Cool season crops can also be grown indoors! If you have a spare salad bowl, a sunny window and lazy cats, you can have fresh greens all winter long.

When it comes to food, I am very particular.

My mother often blames herself for this personality flaw. As her only child, she often indulged certain behavioral quirks that most parents would have punished. Until the sixth grade, I thought everyone’s mother diligently picked celery out of their Sloppy Joes.

When I started growing my own greens, store-bought lettuces instantly lost their appeal. Why eat a pre-packaged bag of baby spinach while nasturtiums and chard thrive in the back yard? Add some carrot tops, a handful of garden herbs, a ripe heirloom tomato and suddenly you’ve created a culinary masterpiece that would bring Iron Chef Morimoto to tears.

With frost advisories right around the corner, I needed another round of garden-fresh greens to get me through a long winter of wilted California imports. So, last weekend I decided to dig up the carrot bed and plant some cool season crops.

Let me tell you, harvesting carrots was the easy part. Finding seeds in the Twin Cities metro area became quite a challenge.

The garden centers I’ve come to know like the back of my hand are now unrecognizable. Disorientated and confused, I wandered through rows and rows of brightly colored mums and dwarf evergreens. Why was all the mulch and black dirt on clearance? Why was the display of seeds and gardening gloves replaced by a display of ceramic scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns?

All around town, nurseries and garden centers were preparing for fall. Weeks ago, the big guys like Bachmann’s and Home Depot sent leftover seed stock back to their vendors. After a few phone calls, I discovered some smaller independents like Lyndale Garden Center and Minnehaha Falls Nursery still had seed but a rather limited selection. I really wanted to plant more spinach, but settled for some arugula and kale seed from Mother Earth Gardens.

Some greens I didn’t recognize, but I decided to plant them anyway. What does broccoli rapini and mustard mizuna taste like? I’ll let you know in 35 - 40 days.

(Note: If you’re interested in fall greens but not a wild goose chase, try ordering organic seed online at Seed Savers or Seeds of Change.)

Since planting my garden, all I can think about – all I can talk about – is my garden. As soon as I wake up, I run to the back yard and stare at the bare, black earth. In my pajamas and bare feet, I search each bed for signs of life.

Ah, what mysteries hide an inch below the soil!

After a week of rain and no sprouts, my enthusiasm turns into impatience. Then my impatience turns into self-doubt. As I reexamine the seed packets, I begin to question my abilities to read and follow basic instructions.

“Seedlings should appear in 7-10 days.”

Seven to ten days? I planted almost two weeks ago and not a single sprout has the courage to surface! Maybe I planted the cucumbers too deep? The corn too shallow?

In the elevator, a coworker asks about my garden. “Hey Greengirl! Anything coming up yet?”

I shake my head and frown. She smiles sympathetically. An awkward pause passes between us. Then her eyes widen with excitement.

“You should just see what I got growing in my garden!” she beams. “Lettuce, beans, snap peas – It’s amazing. Absolutely amazing!”

I bike home, jealous and frustrated. Even the Cedar Lake bike trail was overflowing with healthy, vigourous plants. Birds sang to each other from the tall prairie grasses. Perfume from yellow wildflowers was sweet and thick.

After dinner and a beer, I decide to torture myself with another look at the garden. Instead of barren dirt, my beds were alive with tiny stems and leaves! I clap my hands, hopping from one foot to the other in an elfin jig.

Behold… Spinach!