Salad Days

I just ate a salad for lunch.

I know, I know, it's insane but true. Of course it was IN ADDITION to leftover pasta/spaghetti stuff from the other night but I actually had all the ingredients and put together and ATE a salad. Not a little spot of it on the side of my plate either but a whole entire BOWL of it. I even caught myself scraping the bottom of the bowl to get the last little bit out. What the...?

For those of you who know me you also know this is a BIG DEAL! As a lifelong salad denier it's a solid step toward greendom.

Here's what was in my salad:

Red leaf lettuce
sliced strawberries
diced avocado
honey toasted almond slivers
diced vine ripe tomato
diced cucumber
balsamic vinegarette

It was yummy. Really. I can hardly believe it myself.

The whole salad eating thing started for me when the Peterson's came over and Heidi taught me to make cheese. She made a salad and trying to be polite and not reveal my bizarre secret hatred of all things green, I took a tiny little bit of salad on the side of my plate and proceeded to choke it down. Except, I didn't HAVE to choke it down. It was actually pretty tasty. I was shocked and figured it was a fluke, some bizarre alignment of planets that only occurs once a millenium.

I called her to find out EXACTLY what was in it. Specifically what KIND of lettuce, dressing etc. I needed EXACT directions in order to duplicate the experiment. She left a note in my mailbox a few days later with the ingredients listed in the most general terms: lettuce, tomato, avacado, cucumber, nuts, vinegarette. YES but what KIND of lettuce? It was clearly not iceburg lettuce and it was cut up into small little pieces which I'm now sure was what made it more palatable to me.

I ventured out a few days later to Summer Fresh and studied over the produce section. There are a few different kinds of lettuce it turns out. Shopping for lettuce was like shopping for baby things when I first found out I was pregnant. I had never even ventured into that section of Wal-Mart for more than the cursory and obigatory glance to retrieve a baby shower gift for some other expectant mother. I had a whole NEW AISLE to shop in at Wal-Mart! Now, I have a whole new aisle at Summer Fresh too: the produce section.

I finally decided on the red leaf lettuce and the other ingredients PLUS the strawberries and went home to see if I could recreate the bizarre episode. Turned out I could eat lettuce. I liked it on my plate. I liked it in a bowl. I liked it on a plane. I liked it on a train. I'd eat it with a goat. I'd eat it on a boat...wait a minute, that might be Dr. Seuss.

Regardless, I discovered that under the right conditions, with the right sort of lettuce and various sundry toppings and dressing, SALAD was pretty darn good. Hmmmmm. Sometimes you can teach and old dog new tricks I guess. Now for all of you who are feeling all self-rightous and planning to tell me "I told you so". Save it, because CROW is NOT a tasty topping for my salad. Just be happy my gut has finally had some roughage in there that wasn't dipped in batter and fried in oil.

This new development is going to change the landscape of our garden this year. I bought three kinds of lettuce at Baker Seed two Sunday's ago when Grace and I made our little jaunt over to Mansfield. I spent $50 on seeds. I started our Mama Leone paste tomatoes and had Gary start the Millionaires, the Roma Rio Grande and Rev. Morrow's Long Keepers the other night. We've never grown tomatoes from seed so I'm hopeful it will work without a proper greenhouse. NEXT YEAR we'll definately have to get a greenhouse built.

The lettuce I chose was called Lollo Rossa, Devil's Ears and Red Wing Lettuce Mix which I guess is just a salad suicide because it has a minimun of 1000 seeds in it. Oh my.

I guess the chickens can eat whatever I don't like because the bunnies are moving to the White's house sometime soon. We just aren't spending any time with them and they'll likely get loved up a little more by Owen and Parker. With a new puppy in the house (okay so he's in the crate in the garage right now but THAT's another story) there isn't much time for rabbit lovin'.

Bryon already has a plan for the hutch: raising quail.

The adventure continues.