"lettuce" news and stories

Aside from bacon, lettuce and tomato, what makes the perfect BLT? Balance.

Because there are so few ingredients, each must be carefully weighed against the other: building the sandwich is not entirely dissimilar to building, well, a building. Or, if you're unlucky, a house of cards. Joy the Baker is well-aware of the perils concealed within the bready confines of a BLT, and has, if this picture is any indication, overcome the challenges to construct a real winner. Crispy bacon, thin slices of tomato, some crunchy lettuce and a smear of roasted red pepper mayonnaise on lightly toasted bread: this baby has enough balance to qualify for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team -- or, failing that, a very tasty lunch.

[Via Joy the Baker]

I feel like I'm revealing some deep, dark secret, but here goes: I microwave my salads.

Now, this isn't because I like my lettuce and carrots and salad dressing really hot, it's because of bacteria. I started doing this a couple of years ago, when we had all those recalls and scares involving pre-made bagged salads and spinach. I make my salad on a plate then zap it for about 20 seconds. Just enough to kill something but not make the salad get hot and shrivel.

Now, I have to stress that I have no idea if 20 seconds in the microwave will even do anything to destroy bacteria, but it makes me feel good anyway.

I now return you to your normal Slashfood posts.

One of my favorite cookbooks is The Comfort Diner Cookbook, by Ira Freehoff and Pia Catton. It has a ton of comfort food recipes from the famed New York City eating establishment, everything from classic American sandwiches and breakfasts to pies and other desserts and great side dishes. This one sounds especially intriguing. It's the Cobb Salad Sandwich. Hey, why have a salad as a salad if you can have it as a sandwich?

There's something about this photo of a salad that calls out to me. The bright yellow of the broken egg yolk, contrasted against the neatly cut bits of bacon and the tangle of greens. Topped with a dusting of black pepper, nothing would make me happier than if someone would put this down in front of me and hand me a fork. There's even a blog post about it here.

If you've made a gorgeous salad lately, you should head on over to the Slashfood Flickr group and share your creation. Maybe it will even end up featured in this space!

Source

We've heard those stories of spiders being found in imported grapes, but this one is new to me.

A woman in Brooklyn, NY was startled when a frog jumped out of her organic lettuce. That's right, not only was there a frog in a head of lettuce the woman bought at the Park Slope Food Coop, it was actually alive, surviving the trip from Florida to New York.

As you can see from the pic, it wasn't a big frog like you'd find in a swamp or lake, but still, must have been freaky.