Vegetarian, but not snooty about it

It doesn't take a genius to realize that different people have different nutritional requirements, but you can stretch that piece of common sense in an interesting direction: it's also true that different people have different requirements to feel satiated - I love a good green salad but no matter how much of it I eat I'm going to feel less satisfied than if I had something with, say, 12 ounces of steak on it.

Angela on the other hand is a carbohydrates disposal machine - she can deal with minimal amounts of protein but try to take away her risotto and your hand will come back as a bloody stump. It actually goes farther than that with her - meat is work to her, satisfying and rewarding work, but if she's had a bad day, plopping a roast chicken in front of her will only make things worse.

Cooking vegetarian isn't something I mind doing on occasion; one of my more tasty tricks is to use spinach where you would be using something heavier, and steaming it to retain its bulk. It doesn't go so far as emulating meat like tofu can, but it does a good job of making its absence less noticeable.

This:
...does a great job of highlighting that.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white rice
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup vegetable broth
  

• 1/4 pound spinach
• 1 small yellow onion
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1/4 cup water

• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
  

pinches of:

• salt
• pepper
• cumin
• celery salt
• paprika
  

The Gist:

Cook the rice in whatever manner you like, but instead of using twice the volume of rice in water, use half water and half broth. Vegetable broth is fine (and vegetarian, obviously) though chicken broth works fine, too.

While the rice is cooking, lightly char the sliced onion in the bottom of a medium saucepan with a little oil. You're going to be tempted to stir it; don't. You want that lightly charred flavor because you're going to be steaming it after this and you don't want all of the flavor to leech away.

Once the onions char (10 minutes or so; don't overdo it) put the spinach in the pot with the garlic and 1/4 cup of water. Wait for the water to boil, cover, and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until the spinach is tender but still retains its liquids, about 8 minutes, give or take.

Serve with a drizzling sauce made up of the olive oil, vinegar and spices.

Prepared this way, it will serve two, though it doubles easily.