I consider myself a salad green snob! For many years I had a very large home garden and a good portion of it was devoted to growing every variety of salad green I could find. (This was “back in the day” when you couldn’t just go into a grocery store and find interesting greens!) I studied various ways of planting and ended up loving the French intensive method, where you scatter seeds in sections and begin thinning when they’re young. I planted swaths of each variety which made such a gorgeous display as the seedlings emerged: “greens” of every color, taste, and shape!
When we moved to our new home, which is located in a very rocky and wooded area, I realized it was just too much to put in a big vegetable garden. Maybe when I’m retired!! And after all, in recent years the commercial mesclun mixes have become as standard as the ol’ iceberg lettuce used to be. So no real need to grow all those exotic greens anymore, right? Actually wrong!
There is absolutely no comparison between the mesclun mixes of today and the savory, tangy, and often spicy greens I used to grow. These mixes used to be “special” and now they’ve become “standard”. So how delighted I was to find that Richard had ordered this wonderful new product for our store: Tanimura and Antle “Get in Shape” artisan lettuce. http://www.taproduce.com/consumer/artisan-lettuce.php
It’s a delightful package that contains four actual heads of lettuce: Petite Oak, Petite Tango and Petite Gem, that are packaged in the fields when they’re picked and not pre-washed (a ritual that I used to love!) And what’s even more wonderful – they taste delicious – they actually have diverse flavors – something I used to take for granted with greens.
I admit this is not a local product, they’re grown in California – but in the dead of winter in the Northeast, I love being able to eat a beautiful and flavorful salad grown with care.
bistrotogoblog.wordpress.com 