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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Butter Lettuce


"Absolutely Fresh Because It's Still Alive!"

What kind of marketing is this? Without a doubt, this is the creepiest lettuce I've ever bought. But I needed some Boston Lettuce and this Butter Lettuce was the closest I could find. According to Wikipedia they are both from the same lettuce family, the butter lettuces.

The creepy-crawly part of any plant in my opinion, are the roots. It's the part you never think of as you sniff the flowers and admire the greenery. It's the part where all the living business is taken care of, secretly, in the dark, underground, right in the dirt. Touching plant roots makes me think of handling a handful of veins and arteries. Crazy, I know. But still.

I cut that whole root system out in it's entirety, yielding something that looked a plain ol' iceburg head of lettuce, which is much more palatable than a handful of veins.


After rinsing very well, I tore the leaves from each other, placed the fragile leaves on paper towel and rolled the entire thing to dry.


Butter Lettuce, available at Grower's Direct, $2.59/live head.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a tip: leave the roots in tact and just take lettuce from the plant as needed and it will last a lot longer. Unless, of course, you plan on eating the whole head right away

The Cook said...

Oh yeah! Excellent idea! I wonder if it would work like green onions, where you could put it in water and it'll keep growing. Anybody tried that?