Yes, folks, that’s right: Your taste buds have a special place for lettuce. It has flavor. True, you probably will never find a bottle of lettuce flavoring on store shelves. But, grown and harvested right, each succulent leaf of lettuce offers a distinct flavor and sensation. Think refreshing like mint or cucumber. Think crunchy yet delicate like Pringles potato chips.
This awakening to lettuce came during my trip to the former Yugoslavia, a land where produce is mostly locally grown for quality and not quantity. The farmers pick the lettuce when its most crispy and flavorful — and not when it yields the most bulk (and the least amount of flavor). It’s no wonder that we’ve come to depend on all sorts of goos and gels for dressing to help it go down.
This experience whetted my appetite for my subscription to a produce-delivery service, otherwise known as community support agriculture (CSA). Every week, I’ll receive a bounty of vegetables and herbs grown less than 100 miles away. At $10 a week, the cost beats out the prices at Trader Joes, Safeway and Draeger’s, my usual haunts.
I’ve considered joining a CSA program since 2000, when I first heard about Westside Organics, and then Planet Organics. I never took the plunge. My neighbor, Joyce D, decided to go for it and asked me to join in. This first week, it’s cardoons, swiss chard, meyer lemons, purple carrots, celery, mustard greens and spinach from Two Small Farms.
