Tonight's Salad

      Turns out the dinner party tonight is for fifteen people, not twelve.  Good thing the weather has been fairly good, and that there is some growth in the cold frames.  So over to the park to pick.  Behind door #1:

Good pickings,  1/6/12

      This part of a frame is actually the same stretch of greens that are in the header photo of the blog.  The beauty of leaf lettuce is that you can pick the outer leaves and hardly even notice a change.  This bed has been harvested numerous times.  I have some head lettuce, but am disappointed that it is gone once I harvest.  In the bed above, I harvested Rouge D'Hivre lettuce, Tango lettuce, Red Sails lettuce, and some baby celery tops.
      Behind door #2:

More nice greens,  1/6/12

      In this section of frame I harvested Oak Leaf lettuce (lower right), more Tango lettuce, more Red Sails lettuce, and the darker Ruby lettuce.  The Winter Marvel Bibb lettuce is heading nicely; it is just above the oak leaf.  Some young leaves of the thick stem chinese mustard were also harvested.
      And now behind Door #3, the bonus of the night.  Drum roll please:

Arugula, ah, arugula  1/6/12

      I don't think I ever had arugula until two years ago.  Where was it hiding all those years?  The real beauty of it is that the voles don't seem to eat it.  They have their speedways through it, but don't seem to stop to chomp on it.  Their loss, my gain.  Maybe I should plant 1/8 of an acre and become an arugula baron.

Ready to wash

After a spin dry in the fancy pillow case Pop Pop powered spinner

More than would even fit in the great big bowl

      Using my daughter's recipe, my wife Cindy will next add sliced pears, sliced roasted almonds, and crumbled feta cheese.  Then a secret dressing.  Scrumptious and beautiful.  And picked two hours ago form my Zone 7A garden two days removed from 13 cold degrees.
      During the washing process, I did find the customary three slugs, thus proving organic authenticity, as well the the fact that the slugs love my warm and cozy cold frames as much as the voles do.  Luckily for me, my pet catfish "Slurp" thinks slugs are a delicacy:

mmm mmm good

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