Lettuce never speak of this again
Fresh lettuce reminds me of childhood summers. I loved going next door to play in the dirt in our neighbor’s garden. I would help him pick lettuce and green beans, and he always let me take some home. The stuff you get at the grocery store just isn’t the same.
This week’s CSA share endowed us with two heads of lettuce and a big bag of mesclun, all organic, freshly picked, still graced with dirt from the farm. It just didn’t seem right not to attempt eating a little bit.
Let’s just say it was more interesting as an idea than in execution.
First, I googled “salad smoothie” (because if other people have done something strange and posted about it on the Internet, that makes it ok?) and found a handful of recipes that involved lettuce in the blender. Sadly — and now I can admit this may not have been the best choice of search term — most of the results were for fruit salad smoothies. If anyone can explain how a fruit salad smoothie is different from a regular ol’ fruit smoothie, please, do tell.
So. I assembled a salad:
- 1 1/2 -2 cups mesclun
- 1/2 cucumber, sliced
- handful of roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds
- some thinly sliced garlic scapes
Then put said salad in the blender, along with the following as “dressing”:
- 1/2 cup carrot juice to start, adding more as needed
- 1 tsp minced ginger
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
And blended…and blended…and blended. Lettuce, it turns out, does not go down without a fight.
The only nutritional saving grace here was the protein in the sunflower seeds, and even then, just barely. I probably burned more calories assembling and blending, trying to suck it down, having to put it back in the blender, then trying again, than the entire smoothie contained in the first place. If I really needed 600% of my daily intake of vitamin A, it would have been much easier just to have a straight up glass of carrot juice. It tasted…fine. It got the job done. I wish there had been more ginger. Not exactly a Michelin star.
I will say, though, that the final product also reminded me of childhood in its heartwarming resemblance to one of the most popular home decorating colors of the ’70s:
