The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: elicoolio on May 12, 2015, 08:05:27 AM
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My little spring garden is doing much better than expected and I'm finding myself with lots of yummy salad greens all ready to eat at once. I'm not worried about consuming all my chard and sugar snap peas because I know I can steam it up and freeze it for later, but I am concerned about eating all of my lettuce up before it wilts and/or becomes bitter. Obviously I can (and will) give some away to neighbors and friends, but I was hoping some of you might have some great salad (and salad dressing) ideas for me. I love to eat a big salad and will top it with hard boiled eggs or grilled chicken. My typical salad dressing is a balsamic vinegar/olive oil (with spices thrown in) combo. Super delicious and yummy, but I'd love to hear how others make and dress their salads and/or other uses for the lettuce. I'll eat most anything, but have a kid with nut and shellfish allergies so those items are out in the recipes. Thanks!
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I'd start developing a network of people you can trade produce with. I used to have the perfect garden for growing squash and pumpkins. I'd trade every summer and fall for all my other produce. Everybody wins.
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You can make lettuce soup - so that'd be one way to freeze some of it. Don't have a good recipe for you but if you google it there are lots out there.
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I usually do balsamic vinegar, a bit of Dijon mustard and olive oil. You can mix it up by adding some lemon or raspberry juice to it. My other go to is caesar dressing. My sister made this dressing for a salad (lettuce, goat cheese, candied walnuts, apples and tomatoes) for all of us for Mother's Day that was quite well received (she emailed out the recipe to us as we all liked it so much):
Salad Dressing (Arugula Salad - Ina Garten's Make it Ahead)
1/4 cup Champagne Vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Kocher Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup good olive oil
1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions, white & green parts (3 scallions)
2 tablespoons dried currants
6 cups baby arugula
Whisk the vinegar, mustard, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper together in a small bowl or glass measuring cup. Whisk in the olive oil, stir in the scallions & currents and set aside.
** I used a small shallot instead, she has other dressing recipes, similar to this one where sue uses shallots instead. I also used just 1 clove of garlic (didn't measure) and eyeballed the amount of ground pepper.
As a note, when I had the dressing today, the onion was a bit stronger, so I think the next time I make it, after the initial time we have it, before I put it in the fridge, I may take out the shallots. But it was still good today.
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Great suggestions! I'll definitely give the salad dressing recipe a try. Thank you!
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You can toss it into just about any kind of soup. One of my "fast" dinners is ramen w/ lettuce. Just toss it in a the very end and it cooks super fast and greatly reduces in volume (in other words, you can use up a lot this way).
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You could throw it into a bean/rice dish. I do this with turnip greens, bok choy, lettuce, and kale bits and pieces. I also would throw it into fried rice or stir frys (right at the end as it would cook super fast)
Taco salad (shredded lettuce as the base, add taco meat, shredded cheese)
Tuna fish salad on shredded lettuce is pretty awesome too
BLTs!!!
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I've been making dressing recently with things like tahini and yoghurt with lemon to vary my routine of vinegar/olive oil. Lots of recipes out there on google land. Here is one of my new favs:
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/turmeric-tahini-dressing
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Lettuce wraps
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It's a problem gardeners have in Spring. Lettuce doesn't stand up well to heat, and it doesn't freeze. You have to enjoy it while it's here, there's very little you can do except eat more fresh lettuce.
For next year, follow Thomas Jefferson's advice, and plant "a thimbleful of lettuce seeds a week." This way your whole harvest doesn't mature at the same time. It will all bolt together once it gets hot, and then your lettuce is done until fall comes. If you want to harvest seeds, let a few plants bolt and go to seed. You can't eat lettuce once it bolts, but you can dry it and shake the seeds out. Two or three lettuce plants will create enough seeds to feed your family for next year.
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+1 to thai lettuce wraps
Yum!