Great Find: Artisan Lettuces

Artisan Lettuce from Walmart Produce Department

New container, but the week-old one didn't look much different.

I don't shop much at Walmart, especially for food. I do go there for gas cards and kitty litter, and when I do, I always cruise the produce department to see if they have any interesting vegetables, like Swiss chard, baby bok choy, or rappini. A week or so ago, I found Artisan Lettuces, small heads of 4 different kinds of lettuce packed stem down in a plastic container (that makes an excellent container for scraps for the compost pile).

Clo

The lettuces keep an amazingly long time. I was always having to toss the last half or third of a bag of washed lettuces that I was buying. I decided to make a salad last night, wondering if there would be enough lettuce left to do so, and I did not have to discard anything but the bottom part of the stems (basically the part just above the roots).

Last night's salad.

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Bacon

"Ham's substantial, ham is fat. Ham is firm and sound. Ham's what God was getting at when He made pigs so round." --Roy Blount Jr.

Ever identify with an advertisement on TV? I’ll bet you never identified with an ad for a dog! Well, I have. Every time I see the Beggin’ Strips ad on TV, I drool. (Search for Beggin' Strips on YouTube.) I could actually be that dog, running around the house saying “Bacon, bacon, I smell bacon. Where’s the bacon?”

Bacon is, without a doubt, my favorite food. Collard greens might be next, and, guess what, they’re best when seasoned with bacon drippings. When you get right down to it, I love everything that comes off a pig, right down to the skin. Pork rinds, yummm. Well, maybe not hog head cheese, which isn’t cheese, by the way. We did eat hog head cheese growing up. Daddy would take the scraps of meat and fat from the hog that didn’t make a meal in themselves, chop them up and form them into a ball. It really didn’t contain anything you wouldn’t want to eat—there were no organ meats or entrails included in Daddy’s recipe. I’m not sure whether he cooked the parts first or afterward, but to serve, we’d slice the “head” into portions that looked something like Spam and fry it. In bacon grease, of course. Made a nice accompaniment to breakfast or a sandwich with Miracle Whip.

Alas, I’ve had to curb my appetite for bacon and all things pork in my efforts to improve my nutrition and lower my cholesterol. My first attempts to curb my intake of bacon came in the form of Hormel Premium Real Crumbled Bacon that I would get in big bags from Costco. Bacon bits are lower in fat and cholesterol than cooked bacon strips and pack a lot of flavor for a small portion. I put them in salads and scrambled eggs and atop “diet” pizzas. Recently, I discovered Oscar Mayer Natural Lightly Smoked Uncured Bacon that has no nitrites or nitrates. Two slices contain only 5 g of fat and 15 mg of cholesterol. This was like a gift from God to me. Not only could I not feel guilty about the fat and cholesterol, it has no nitrates or nitrites. With my impeccable logic, I quickly classified this new product as a health food and now I can have my favorite sandwich—a BLT—guilt-free (although still not often). I eat it with total abandonment and relish every bite all the while chanting “Bacon, bacon, I smell bacon. It’s BAAAAAAACON!”

Tomatoes

When I went shopping last week, I bought some new "gourmet tomatoes." They came in a plastic "bin" with a flip top lid and holes for air flow. (As an aside, I've been thinking, although they are recyclable, that these would make greater starter pots for seeds.)

Anyway, there were 5 kinds of tomatoes: yellow cherry (go figure) tomatoes, orange cocktail tomatoes, red grape tomatoes, mini plum tomatoes (some were shaped almost like a teeny tiny butternut squash), and the deepest red, almost purple-black "exotic" tomatoes I've ever seen. I think it was the exotic tomato that had most striking tomato taste exploding in the mouth that I've had in a long time, but it may have been the plum. Campari tomatoes on the vine have a great flavor, but that little exotic tomato was divine! I ate them simply with fresh ground sea salt and mixed peppers.

I remember back in the early days of our book when our editor brought my husband and me to Philadelphia for a meeting. She was supposed to take us to dinner at this Black Cat Cafe near the university; she became ill but told us to go anyway and she would pay. There I had my first baby wild greens salad. The greens were so tiny, they still had the roots attached as did the baby carrots. This is nearly 15 years ago when my acquaintance with foods was very narrow and my palate unsophisticated. This salad, though, was a marvel to me. I could not get enough of examining each little green and veggie, and I was delighted at the taste sensation. It must have taken me half an hour to eat that salad as my husband and I laughed and remarked on the shapes, colors, and taste of each little green the whole time. Although I credit moving to California for teaching me to appreciate the nutrition and variety of salads, this was my first experience with a salad that was not based on iceberg lettuce (the bottom feeder of lettuces). I may have had a Cesar or two prior to this, but not sure about that now. I don't remember anything else we ate that night. I'm sure it was delicious and above the bar, but I only remember the salad.

What does that have to do with the tomatoes. Well, they were kind of like that, too. I, who used to eat only what I'd been raised on and in the manner in which my mother cooked, have come a long way, baby, in my appreciation for foods and the myriad ways they can be prepared.

I think I understand why many food critics and chefs are fat. They LOVE food. I don't think they're over-eating for psychological reasons. I think they just relish the colors, flavors, and textures of the vast array of foods and spices we have available to us today through modern technology and transportation. I'm with them in that (although admittedly some of my eating is still psychological).