I love growing fresh lettuce. Not only is it easy to grow (important in my garden) but it’s delicious! Buttercrunch is one of my favorites because it tastes much like its name — soft and buttery.
For an easy and healthy lunch, I like to mix it with some spinach, garbanzo beans, avocado and goat cheese. Drizzle some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and — voila! — lunch is served.
While I enjoy fresh lettuce, my biggest problem was keeping it fresh. I have a lot of lettuce growing in my garden — so much, I can’t eat it all in one or two sittings. And old lettuce is no good. Not only sour-smelling, it tastes awful. So what’s a girl to do?
Preserve it! And you can do so for up to 10 days. Best part? It’s simple. Gather and snip your lettuce, then wash it.
Rinse and semi-dry. This is important. You don’t want to completely dry your lettuce, as the moisture helps retain its freshness when you store it.
Once you have cleaned all your leaves, roll out a line of paper towels (keep squares connected) and dampen. This can be a delicate process, depending on your brand of paper towels, but basically you want to ring out enough water, leaving your towels slightly damp. Lay out your lettuce across the towels.
Then roll it up!
Take your roll and place it into a plastic bag and remove as much air as possible before sealing. Store in refrigerator. That’s it! When you want a fresh salad, simply go in and grab your bag, taking as much lettuce as you need, re-sealing the bag as before and then returning it to the refrigerator.
Now I realize most will raise their brow at my claim of 10 days of freshness, but I did in fact use mine up to that point and found the taste to be pleasant, the texture firm. This is similar to the way I store fresh from the garden herbs. So toss those tiny seeds across your soil and enjoy fresh salads every day!
Thank you ever so much for solving this HUGE problem for me.