It’s lettuce season. This is the time of the year when organizing a combined CSA gets difficult. When everyone who grows lettuce for us has lettuce ready, and we have committed to buying their lettuce, we all get a little tired of salads. Now you may wonder why we would commit to purchasing lettuce from so many farmers, and that’s a good question, with a reasonable answer: the weather makes us do it.
Heat, cold, floods, and drought all affect the crops, and if we have a couple of farmers tell us their lettuce has succumbed to the forces of Mother Nature, we have other farmers who are there for us, our knights in shining salad bowls. We even have backup farmers to call in case our regular farmers don’t have stuff for us. It’s hard to get farmers to grow stuff for you if you don’t commit to taking it when it’s ready. We also like to offer a lot of varieties of lettuce, to keep your salads fun and exciting (you’re all still excited, right?).
So you see why we have so much lettuce to contend with at this time of year. Now, how do we avoid having the lettuce succumb to the compost pile? Clean it. That’s the first step in making it easier to eat a lot of lettuce. We all know how unappealing the prospect of making a salad can be when you get home from work (even if you aren’t working) late, hungry and tired. But if the lettuce is clean and ready, you’re three quarters of the way there. So get out the spinner and clean it all up and store it in the fridge. Now, do you want a salad or do you want to go a little off the beaten path and try a Creamy Lettuce Soup? What? That’s right. Your family will not miss the salad just this once, so go on and live a little.