Crazy Days Challenge - Day Thirteen - Making Your Lettuce Last

Unwrap your lettuce ... this works with most kinds of lettuce by the way ... slice off the very tip of the brown bit.  Put that into your compost bucket or onto the compost heap, or in my case add it to the 'chickens treats bowl'.

This is the only bit of the lettuce that you don't eat, and in doing either of the above this isn't actually even wasted!!

Next take off the outermost leaves, the limpest and perhaps marked ones.  Add these to the polythene bag or plastic box that you keep in the freezer ready to make soup at a later date ... you don't do this?  You should, a free pot of soup at the end of each week or so is not to be sniffed at.  All trimmings and peelings can go in here ready for when you have the time and the inclination to make the soup!!

Another use for the outer leaves is as a natural food wrap, they help to keep other ... perhaps more valuable ... vegetables fresher for longer in the fridge if wrapped tightly around them and then bagged.  They can still be added to the soup box after this  🙂

In my case I was using one of the first good leaves of this lettuce to contain a messy sandwich filler that I had concocted for my lunch.

A lettuce leaf works a treat to keep things more contained and adds some more taste and crunch to a salad sandwich..

After taking off the leaf I needed I sat the lettuce on it's now trimmed core onto a piece of kitchen paper, this helps draw any moisture from the lettuce and feeds it back slightly if it is needed, which keeps the lettuce fresh for longer.

Then it was popped into a clean polythene bag and all the air pushed out before twisting the neck of the bag and holding it tightly closed with a peg.

This lettuce should now last for around two weeks in the salad drawer of the fridge.  

What you have to remember is not to slice into the lettuce ... as my darling husband tends to do if I'm not here to remind him ... if you want shreds of lettuce, instead of slicing it directly off the lettuce, pop off a few leaves roll them up tightly and slice them instead.  Air is your enemy in a lot of food storage, and cut ends of lettuce/cabbage and this type of vegetable start to go off so much more quickly if you expose too much of them to the air.

This has been a Lesson in Lettuce.

The word lettuce now has no meaning to me ... I have typed it out far too often 🤣🤣

Sue xx