Margaret Prouse

I’ve sometimes fantasized about tearing up our entire back yard and transforming it into a big vegetable garden.

That is only a fantasy, because it’s the dreaming I’m good at. When it comes to the practicality of weeding, there’s plenty of room for growth.

So, we carry on with a nice sized (but not huge) backyard garden that every year has some successes and some failures. For the last two years, our peppers were the success story. This year, the late frosts killed most of the pepper plants I had planted, and June’s cold weather stunted the replants.

This year’s successes are the plants that enjoy cooler weather, the salad plants. The leaf lettuce is the best we’ve ever grown, a profusion of fluffy green and red leaves with mild flavour and no bitterness.

There are many types of lettuce, suited for different things. Butterhead or buttercrunch lettuce, such as bibb, with its buttery texture and loosely packed leaves, is great for making Asian-style lettuce wraps with seasoned ground meat mixtures. Lettuce comes in all shapes and textures, from crunchy iceberg to flavourful romaine.

Crisphead lettuce, like iceberg, was the first lettuce to stand up to long distance transportation, making it available year-round. It is the best for adding crunch to sandwiches and stays crisp long after many other lettuces would be limp.

Another crisp lettuce, somewhat more flavourful than iceberg, is romaine or cos lettuce, best known for its starring role in Caesar salad.

Certain lettuce mixes are called mesclun, or field greens. In Nice, France, where mesclun originated, the leaves were from wild greens, but now seed houses sell

mesclun mixtures that can include arugula, oak leaf lettuce, chervil, dandelion, and salsify. These are all leafy, not forming heads, and can be cut repeatedly for making salads.

So, it is with other leafy lettuces; they also grow up after being trimmed, yielding salad after salad. The leaf lettuce that we have in our garden includes red, green and oak leaf lettuces. It is more frilly and delicate than the sturdy iceberg and romaine and, as long as we cut it before it bolts (grows rapidly and goes to seed), the flavours are mild and delicious. I like it for salads and in sandwiches that will be eaten right away.

Naturally, since our garden is supplying lots of good leaf lettuce, our summer menus are rich in salads.

Having a breakfast salad of mixed leaf lettuce tossed with vinaigrette dressing and topped with a boiled or poached egg, served with toast on the side, is a good way to start the day. It is colourful, contributes a serving of vegetables and supplies protein to keep you feeling satisfied through the morning.

Choose a simple oil and vinegar dressing if you prefer mild flavours or use a more assertive one spiked with Dijon mustard and crushed garlic for something more substantial. I have happily used this dressing since Canadian cooking personality Bonnie Stern included it, years ago, in her recipe for Bistro Salad in a publication distributed by the P.E.I. Egg Board.

In a small bowl, whisk vinegar with mustard, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. (or shake all together in a tightly covered bottle.)

This dressing is good on a breakfast or brunch salad, or one to serve with a sandwich or burger for lunch. I also enjoy, on a salad of leaf lettuce and chopped green onions, a creamy mayonnaise dressing thinned with plain yogurt or buttermilk.

For dinner, a full plate salad makes a delicious and refreshing meal, emphasizing the vegetable component of the meal, and providing protein via legumes, cheese, meat or chicken. For these, I usually combine leaf lettuce with romaine. I’d recommend the recipe for “Rio Style Sweet Pork Salad” in Karrie Truman’s “Seriously Good Freezer Meals”, which I recently reviewed.

One of the great things about gardening is being able to experiment with different ways of using the successful crops. This week, it’s lettuce. Who knows what will come next?