What to Do with Too Much Lettuce in the Garden

No matter how careful I think I’m being when I plant, it happens every year.  Too much garden fresh loose leaf lettuce. A glut. An overflow.

Unlike that greenish white bowling ball of iceberg you buy at the store, fresh garden lettuce has an extremely limited lifespan in the fridge. Lettuce also doesn’t tend to last well in the garden.

Correction-it would last a very long time in the garden if the temperature stayed nice and cool-but invariably the weather warms and your lettuce will bolt, fulfilling its biological imperative to make more little lettuce plants by sending up a stalk and turning bitter.  I will say personally I’ve had good luck with “SloBolt” which is-well-slow to bolt.  You may not be able to find it in your mega center, but a quick internet search should pull up a vendor quickly.

The first thing to do if you want to lengthen the life of you lettuce harvest is to treat it right when you pick it.  Separate the leaves then soak in lukewarm water to get all the dirt off.  Lift the leaves out of the water (don’t pour the water off or all the grit will just settle back on the produce).

Next you need to remove the water.  I recommend using a salad spinner but if  you don’t have one you can wrap the lettuce in a towel (or place them in a string bag like one of those white mesh lingerie bags for your dryer) and head outside.  Whirl the towel/bag around your head and let the natural centrifugal force fling the moisture away.

For storage wrap the leaves in paper or regular towels (to absorb moisture) and place in a plastic bag in the fridge.  There are plenty of fantastic salad recipes out there to shake things up a bit from your basic “garden salad”. Lettuce can fill up wraps or sandwiches, or if you really want t0 be innovative you could try  Thai Lettuce Folds.

But what if you are sick of salads, sandwiches & wraps? Never fear.  I went to my favorite garden vegetable resource-The Victory Garden Cookbook.  I love this book-it has an entire chapter on each type of vegetable!

According to the book, you can COOK lettuce.

Yes, I know. Heresey.

But what do you have to lose? It’s just going to wind up in the compost pile at this rate right? So give it a try. If you don’t like it then just ditch it and you are no worse off than when you started.

So how exactly does this magical cooking process work? Well to start off with she says the stiffer, more bitter lettuces seem to work better, but you can really use any type of lettuce.  There are several basic cooking methods: Saute, Blanch, Steam & Braise.

Sauteed: Saute in olive oil or butter until leaves are wilted & tender. Turn the heat up to high briefly to cook off the additional moisture and “dry out” the greens at the very end of the process. Need a recipe to follow? Try this one for Wilted Lettuce.  If you go without a recipe, you can finish the sauteed lettuce simply with heavy cream cooked down till it coats the leaves* and add salt & pepper.  or saute onions & garlic before adding the lettuce.

Blanched: Clean the head of lettuce very well by soaking in a sink full of water for a few minutes then gently swishing up and down.  Then either drop the entire head into a pot of boiling salted water for just a few minutes, or blanch individual leaves for 1 minute.  Plunge blanched lettuce in an ice water bath to stop cooking.  Blanching removes strong bitterness.  You can finish by tossing the leaves with herbs, spices, lemon or seasonings. Blanched leaves can be used to wrap meats before cooking.  This looks fancy and helps the meat inside retain it’s moisture without adding additional fat.  Additionally you can use blanched lettuce leaves in the same way you would use blanched grape leaves to make Dolmades

Braising: Start by blanching the entire head of very well cleaned lettuce for about 2 minutes, then plunge in cool water.  Drain and gently squeeze out water.  Place in a greased baking dish, sprinkle w/salt & pepper, and cover with 2 c broth & 1 C water.  Bring pan to simmer on stove top then cover & place in oven to braise at 350 for about 1 hr.   When done you can reduce the liquid down, add a pat of butter & use it for sauce.  For a different version you can follow this recipe for Braised Hearts of Lettuce with Peas.

Steamed: Steam entire heads of lettuce then finish in the same way as the blanched leaves.

So you can see, there are many ways to use up that excess of lettuce.  You can even make soup~but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to find out about that. . . I’ll be experimenting this afternoon and post about it tomorrow if it turns out well.

So what other ways do you know of to use up lettuce? Have you tried any of these cooking methods?

*Yes, cream. The lady who wrote “The Victory Garden Cookbook” was schooled in french cooking, so there is plenty of cream & butter to go around.

How to Use Up Green Tomatoes

My tomato plants are up with lovely green tomatoes, yet there is at least a month to go before I even see a hint of red blush on them. But I’m tired of the greens & carrots in my garden.

So what can you do with all of those green tomatoes?

The classic use for green tomatoes is Fried Green Tomatoes. I simply slice a big beefsteak tomato fairly thin (less than 1/4 inch), dip them in flour, then in egg, then in cornmeal, and fry them in a little oil in a skillet. Try not to move them too much at first or the “crust” can break off. Also, don’t  slice them too thick they won’t cook all the way through fast enough. Experiment!

I also have a recipe for Green Tomato Bread. It know it sounds disgusting, but it really is a fantastic sweet quickbread.  More along the lines of zucchini bread.  This is not a low calorie recipe but it sure is yummy.

Green Tomato Bread

3 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1 TBS Cinnamon
2 Large Eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chopped green tomatoes (approx 2) Don’t peel or seed.

Preheat oven to 350, and grease and flour 2 bread pans.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center.

In a small bowl lightly beat eggs, add vegetable oil and vanilla.

Pour liquid ingredients into well in the center of dry ingredients. Stir until just combined. Gently mix in green tomatoes.

Divide evenly into the two loaf pans, and bake for 1 hour-until a toothpick come out of the center clean. Cool well before storing.

Do you have a ton of green cherry tomatoes? Try  “Fireballs” – spicy green pickled cherry tomatoes.  I really like these, but my husband isn’t so fond, so try a small batch & see what you think before you go wholesale.

Fireballs

enough small green cherry tomatoes to fill 4 qt. jars
4 garlic cloves
4 celery stalks
4 hot red peppers
4 heads dill
1 qt water
1/2 c pickling salt
2 qt white vinegar

As in any canning recipe, start by preheating your jars and your canning water.

Prick each green cherry tomato with a clean (sterilized) needle several times. This prevents them from splitting in cooking, and I think it helps the flavor to soak in. I did this the night before and stored them in the fridge in a large zippered bag.

Fill 4 hot quart jars with green cherry tomatoes.

To each jar add a stalk of celery, a hot pepper, a clove of garlic and a head of dill. (I used 4 pint jars, added one of each, substitution a sprig of lovage for celery, 2 slices of jalepeno for the red chili, and a 1/2 tsp of frozen dillweed for the head of dill*)

Make a brine by combining water, pickling salt and vinegar in a pot and bringing it to a boil. Fill jars with brine to 1/2″ from top. Process 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

I have also found that green tomatoes can be chopped and added to many stir fries and curries. Last year I chopped them and froze them in 1 cup portions, and added them with no problem to those dishes.

So what are some of your ways to use green tomatoes?

*Note-canning books are constantly pointing out that you shouldn’t change recipes for water bath canning (doesn’t matter for pressure canning) as it can cause them to be unsafe if you change the balance of non acidic food to acidic food. I personally felt comfortable doing this as the tomatoes are all acidic, and they are being canned in a brine that is highly acidic. You have to make your decisions based on your comfort level.

Dehydrate Herbs in Your Car!

This one falls in the “honey, are you crazy” realm for poor patient Yankee Bill.  There are just some thing I do in the course of following the frugal path that he sighs and shakes his head over. Using my car as a dehydrator to dry herbs (lovage) is one of those things.

You see, our lovage plant (which I use contantly in cooking & adore) has been reaching it’s full potential. That is to say it has grown to almost 5 feet tall.  Planting it right next to the back door has made it extremely accessible and convenient for cooking-however hubs sense of aesthetics has been marred by it’s somewhat, um, weedy straggly appearance.

Hey, I said it was a very useful plant, I never said it was beautiful.

He asked, very graciously, that I give it a haircut.  Although it wasn’t bothering me in the least, some things you do for the sake of one you love.  I gave it a trim.

Now my frugal soul (aka packrat tendancies) kicked in. Although I knew that the lovage plant post trim was still way more herb than I’d ever use in a season-I really, really hated the idea of throwing out perfectly good leaves.

So what to do? I have read that you can freeze them in water. I know last fall I froze some the lazy way-just cut off a bunch of stems and threw them in a freezer bag. Those were fine in stews etc, but had that slimy watery texture. Not really pleasant to add to a potato salad.

That’s when I remembered one of those random frugal ideas I had read about but never gotten around to trying.  Using your car as a dehydrator!  I know that sounds crazy, but think about it. . .how hot does YOUR car get sitting in the summer sun. . .

I ran down to the basement and grabbed one of the large screens I saved* when we had all the windows replaced a year ago.  I gave it a good scrub and sat it against the deck to dry.

Then I cut all the good leaves off of the Lovage stems I had trimmed. I was going to try doing something with the stems-in fact kept them in the kitchen for a day before I decided that was just too much and composted them.

Then I took the screen and placed it in my car.  It was just long enough to balance on the front headrests and the back seat.

I spread the leaves on the screen. They completely filled it up, with some overlap.  That worried me a bit, but I knew they would shrink as they dried. Although I’ve read some articles that say you should leave the windows cracked for air flow, I left mine all the way up.

I checked the herbs at the end of the day, and there was significant shrinkage, but they were still limp and pliable.  So I decided to leave them in for another day**.

It proceeded to either rain or be very humid for the next 3 days. Now I didn’t want to take them out of the car in the rain, and the times when it wasn’t raining it seemed like it was really windy. So I just left them there! The first day I didn’t drive anywhere. The second I did but just left the screen balanced there. The third day I had to drive with the kids in the car so I carefully moved the screen to the cargo area of the vehicle.

The car did smell pretty strongly, but pleasantly, of dried lovage not only during the drying process, but also for several days afterwards.

When the drying was complete I brought the leaves inside and placed them in a Gallon sized zippered baggie.

Hmm. That is pretty bulky . . .

What if I just sort of crushed it up, right there in the bag?

There! Much better. Now all I have to do is put it in a container and stick it in the spice cupboard! Viola!

I wonder what else I can dehydrate in the car? What do you dehydrate? Do you use an electric dehydrator or some other method?

For a great article on dehydrating check out “Dehydrating Vegetables” by Pat Veretto

*Note: I try really hard not to over-do when saving things-although Yankee Bill would say I do NOT succeed on that particular front! I showed great restraint and only saved 4 window screens. . .

**Note: It was only about 70 out. If you had hotter weather I’m sure it would be done in a day.

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