I Never Get Tired Of Looking At Lettuce
Over the years I've come to the conclusion that I do not think about salad the same way normal people do. The first step toward this realization occurred one Thanksgiving dinner when I was passed a beautiful wooden salad bowl. Peering inside, I saw a mouthwatering mix of butterhead lettuce, red onion, and avocado tossed with a creamy dressing. There was just one helping left, and as I was about to place it on my plate, I glanced around the table and noticed that only one other person had any salad. The contents of that bowl were supposed to feed seven more people!
Then there was the phone conversation I once had with a long-distance gardening friend. He had called to announce that he and his wife had made an interesting discovery about growing lettuce.
"If you just pull off some of the leaves instead of plucking the entire plant from the ground, the leaves will keep growing back. The way we figure it," he said brightly, "you only need three lettuce plants to feed two people for the entire summer."
I decided not to mention the three heads of lettuce I'd consumed earlier that day for lunch—or the 200 square feet of salad greens in my organic heirloom garden.
A few weeks ago I was harvesting a pile of mesclun to send home with a gardenless friend. "That's plenty!" she said as I continued to pick.
"That," I politely informed her, "is barely enough for one serving."
And when I set a bowl of salad in front of a houseguest recently, he looked down at it, looked up at me, and said, "Please tell me this is for all of us."
"You don't have to finish it," I reassured him. But I probably will.
So I'm a little obsessed with salads, which I eat nearly every day of the year. And while pretty much anything green, leafy, and not poisonous is fair game for my salad bowl, lettuce holds a special place in my heart.
For there are certain times when absolutely nothing, not even chocolate, will satisfy my soul and stomach except some freshly picked butter lettuce from the garden. Even if it's 1:30 in the morning. And we're in the middle of a thunder/lightning/wind/hail/rainstorm. And my terrified, 50-pound, thunder-phobic dog is trying desperately to climb into my arms as I crouch down harvesting lettuce in the wet darkness with a 98% dead flashlight. But oh, how that salad hit the spot.
European Mesclun Mix From Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
The lettuce season this year was surprisingly bountiful. Lettuce is an iffy thing to plant for spring in southern Missouri. We usually have at least a few days in the 90s in April--which in itself can be enough to ruin your crop--and it's always a toss up as to whether May will behave itself and stay mild or jump headfirst into summer. This year it behaved, and I harvested gorgeous lettuce every day for weeks.
On June 8th, with temperatures threatening to soar upwards, I grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped what was left in the two 4' x 8' raised beds I'd direct seeded at the end of March, leaving the base of the plants in the ground. It amounted to several pounds. Because I make it a point to plant varieties that are heat tolerant and slow to bolt, despite quite a few days in the upper 80s I was still picking unbitter bounty on June 19th (while crossing my fingers the stuff in the fridge wouldn't rot). Today I enjoyed the last of the spring lettuce. July 1st--I think that may be a record.
My salads will now be lettuceless for the next several months, but if you live in a place where summers are mild (oh, how I envy you!), it's not too late to plant, and growing your own lettuce from seed is easier than you might think. Click here to visit my kitchen garden and learn how.
Fast Farm Food
With such an abundance of wonderful lettuce hanging around, it was only a matter of time before I figured out a way to eat it for breakfast. For the first time in months, I was out of my beloved blueberry bran muffins, and morning found me flailing around the kitchen, half starved, my mind a blank. I'm the kind of girl who needs to know what she's going to have for breakfast when her head hits the pillow the night before.
Incapable of doing anything else, I turned my mind toward thoughts of lunch. Before long I'd convinced myself that freshly laid fried eggs on a bed of lettuce wasn't really all that different from the scrambled eggs with chopped Swiss chard I sometimes whip up. Bits of homegrown lamb salami crisped up nicely in place of pancetta or proscuitto or bacon and left me a little grease to fry the eggs in. A few chopped scallions, a drizzle of creamy dressing (yes, even foodie farmgirls sometimes buy bottled salad dressing--organic of course), and some freshly grated pecorino romano finished it off.
It wasn't until everything was arranged on my plate that I realized I'd just spent about five minutes making a meal that was not only mostly homegrown, but healthy and beautiful as well. I snapped a photo and dove in. I guess I need to run out of bran muffins more often.
© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.
Then there was the phone conversation I once had with a long-distance gardening friend. He had called to announce that he and his wife had made an interesting discovery about growing lettuce.
"If you just pull off some of the leaves instead of plucking the entire plant from the ground, the leaves will keep growing back. The way we figure it," he said brightly, "you only need three lettuce plants to feed two people for the entire summer."
I decided not to mention the three heads of lettuce I'd consumed earlier that day for lunch—or the 200 square feet of salad greens in my organic heirloom garden.
A few weeks ago I was harvesting a pile of mesclun to send home with a gardenless friend. "That's plenty!" she said as I continued to pick.
"That," I politely informed her, "is barely enough for one serving."
And when I set a bowl of salad in front of a houseguest recently, he looked down at it, looked up at me, and said, "Please tell me this is for all of us."
"You don't have to finish it," I reassured him. But I probably will.
So I'm a little obsessed with salads, which I eat nearly every day of the year. And while pretty much anything green, leafy, and not poisonous is fair game for my salad bowl, lettuce holds a special place in my heart.
For there are certain times when absolutely nothing, not even chocolate, will satisfy my soul and stomach except some freshly picked butter lettuce from the garden. Even if it's 1:30 in the morning. And we're in the middle of a thunder/lightning/wind/hail/rainstorm. And my terrified, 50-pound, thunder-phobic dog is trying desperately to climb into my arms as I crouch down harvesting lettuce in the wet darkness with a 98% dead flashlight. But oh, how that salad hit the spot.
European Mesclun Mix From Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
The lettuce season this year was surprisingly bountiful. Lettuce is an iffy thing to plant for spring in southern Missouri. We usually have at least a few days in the 90s in April--which in itself can be enough to ruin your crop--and it's always a toss up as to whether May will behave itself and stay mild or jump headfirst into summer. This year it behaved, and I harvested gorgeous lettuce every day for weeks.
On June 8th, with temperatures threatening to soar upwards, I grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped what was left in the two 4' x 8' raised beds I'd direct seeded at the end of March, leaving the base of the plants in the ground. It amounted to several pounds. Because I make it a point to plant varieties that are heat tolerant and slow to bolt, despite quite a few days in the upper 80s I was still picking unbitter bounty on June 19th (while crossing my fingers the stuff in the fridge wouldn't rot). Today I enjoyed the last of the spring lettuce. July 1st--I think that may be a record.
My salads will now be lettuceless for the next several months, but if you live in a place where summers are mild (oh, how I envy you!), it's not too late to plant, and growing your own lettuce from seed is easier than you might think. Click here to visit my kitchen garden and learn how.
Fast Farm Food
With such an abundance of wonderful lettuce hanging around, it was only a matter of time before I figured out a way to eat it for breakfast. For the first time in months, I was out of my beloved blueberry bran muffins, and morning found me flailing around the kitchen, half starved, my mind a blank. I'm the kind of girl who needs to know what she's going to have for breakfast when her head hits the pillow the night before.
Incapable of doing anything else, I turned my mind toward thoughts of lunch. Before long I'd convinced myself that freshly laid fried eggs on a bed of lettuce wasn't really all that different from the scrambled eggs with chopped Swiss chard I sometimes whip up. Bits of homegrown lamb salami crisped up nicely in place of pancetta or proscuitto or bacon and left me a little grease to fry the eggs in. A few chopped scallions, a drizzle of creamy dressing (yes, even foodie farmgirls sometimes buy bottled salad dressing--organic of course), and some freshly grated pecorino romano finished it off.
It wasn't until everything was arranged on my plate that I realized I'd just spent about five minutes making a meal that was not only mostly homegrown, but healthy and beautiful as well. I snapped a photo and dove in. I guess I need to run out of bran muffins more often.
© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.
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Comments: 11
But the more I thought, the more I agreed with the premise that lettuce, or any greens for that matter, should have a place in breakfast menus everywhere.
Look at the Japanese people, they eat seaweeds in one form or another with every meal. Seaweeds are just lettuce harvested from the sea.
Although, I have found that I really can't stand Arugala. I planted a mesclun mix, and the arugula is just horrible! I just can't stand the smell...and I can't get past it. To me it smells just like a skunk..not for me or my salad bowl!