A Story About Lettuce
And all the other things that make a salad, perfect.
Asteracae, Brassicaceae, Chenopopianeae,
Or the three families of vegtabales used in the salad shown above
Also language which means very little to (most) people who didn’t specifically study the topic or frequently finding themselves reading something about lettuce or other various plants.. present company is a little of both
But in general, means very little aside from being varies members of the plant family.
In 2023 the top three grossing lettuce varieties were Romaine with 1.54 billion in sales, followed by Iceburg with 1.33 billion and loose leaf coming in at a total of 1.25 billion. For clarification loose leaf is generally considered to be any lettuce that doesn’t form a complete head. Which as someone who has a rare fascination with food in general makes my heart happy because in 2020 a staggering 52% of the lettuce purchased was iceburg.
Before you all give up on me, no this is not going to be me rambline on about the specific sales value of various produce over the last five years, just bare with me for one more minute pretty please 😁.
Iceburg is the least nutrient-rich lettuce produced, and frankly, it’s kind of everywhere and is best eaten doused in salad dressing for flavor, but it is really cheap.
Don’t get me wrong, Iceburg still has its fare share of folate and Vitamin A but otherwise it is actually is considered to be the least nuntrient dense salad green. It also just isn’t very pretty if you are looking for a show stopper for you’re next family dinner or celebration. Romaine however brings Vitamin K and phytonutrients to the party and is considered to be very nutrient rich. But they leave so much on the table. I’m not even just talking nutritional value. I’m talking color, vibrancy, texture, and flavor that when put together can be a delicious, beautiful, explosion of flavor that become a show stopper all on their own and a nutritional powerhouse.
If you bring in the “side kicks”; Kale, mustards, spinach, watercress, radish greens, and chards, even butter lettuce then you’re talking about a party!
When Nick and I decided to start Leafy Dreams it was for a very simple reason, to feed our, and all of our surrounding communities fresh, chemical and pesticide free produce. Produce that was hand picked by myself or Nick, packaged by us, our labels are created by us, and we package and deliver every piece of lettuce that goes into the salad you take home. In fact, the plan was never to do salad blends. We figured they would be an option, but we also thought that people would enjoy the option on having a variety of salad greens available to purchase to create their own masterpieces. The feedback we received was outstanding, but one common theme stuck out: focus on the mixes! So we became focused on creating smal batch salads for a variety of venders.
There are so many reasons this, still to this day, makes my heart happy but one of the biggest reasons it makes me heart happy is the simple fact that the community loves the variety of greens we use to create them. We have three house blends currently and like to include seasonal specials such as an all red blend around the holidays. We also have been known to create remixes of our fan faves! So if you see “The Re-Mix” on our packaging, we’re just switching it up on you a little bit. This is how the Lettuce Be Friends blend joined the family along with one first (and personal favorite) The “Almost Famous” Dreamy Blend. If you only take one thing out of this it should be the understanding that we put all of our love and care into every ingredient, every blend is made as though we are feeding it to our own families because to us, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Another fun fact: we don’t cut any of our greens, you wont find a chopped salad option from us. Think of it this way, if you buy an apple from the store and cut it in half, what happens to the other half if you don’t eat it immediately?
It starts to decay, and if it is put with other pieces of fruit, all of them will start to decay even faster. However, if you leave in tact or even better, with a little bit of the stem left the produce has access to the nutrients inside of the stem (or roots) and is then able to keep its vibrancy and flavor much longer.
It is so important to us to keep all of the important vitimems and electrolytes present in our blends to keep our produce as nutrient-dense as possible when it gets to your home. As with anything else in life, the more our produce is cared for, the better it grows… and in our business, we are all about growing.
In or farm we grow all of these things in towers, side by side with other lettuces, salad greens, and herbs. We haven’t really had many people ask us for one kind of lettuce, with the exception of Romaine, and let’s face it Romaine is delicious, but so is the lettuce pictured above which is called Landis Winter. Winter lettuces can be sown all the way through November, at least in my area. This particular variety tastes very similar to romaine, just slightly less crisp and a little lighter in color.
My favorite part of what we do is creating our salad blends. I love the ways that the various families of vegetables that cover the wide range of salad greens we grow can compliment each other and actually change the way another salad green blends in with a particular mix and really changes the way another flavors are enhanced or calmed by another variety creating a perfect balance that makes that particular salad its own unique salad blend. We grow greens that you may find in your garden as well as some that would require a trip across a pond or two to find it thriving. Our blends wouldn’t be as special as they are without the particular flavors we are able to bring together by including so many of them. What I love most about our system of farming is that it allows us to raise all of our crops without creating compition for nutrients or light which are imparitive to the growth and health of our crops. Where we place them in our farm makes no difference, its an even growing field for every seed. We need everything to get the proper care it needs to thrive because without it our company doesn’t exsist. We plant in a rotation so walking into our farm you walk into walls of every color of the rainbow! Reds, dark deep greens, purple spicy mustard, fragrant herbs, and of course the rainbow of our chards all mixed together. If you think our salad blends are pretty, you really should see what it looks like on the inside. I have taken and shared thousands of pictures and not a singe one shows the true beauty that is our farm.
Maybe it’s the warmth of the heat lights, or the somehow soothing purple glow that we always see in our peripherals but personally I think its stunning. Being the person that gets to see how these beautiful, very different species of plants can come together to create salad blends to be something so much more than just a bag of lettuce you grab hanging in a reach in cooler at your local market. I find myself wondering how many people buy those bags and know what they’re eating, or where it came from, or if the person packaging it knew anything about it, or if they care. Is lettuce just lettuce? Is one salad the same as the next? Are they all coming from the same place, getting the same amounts of care… do their farmers sing to them? I know all of this sounds so silly. But I also believe in singing to your plants. I love caring for the food that we grow for our community. I love knowing that the same love and care is going into every package sell whether it be salad blends packaged for individual use or 25 pounds going to a restaurant, I know that everything we sell is delicious, as fresh as you can ever hope, and has little to no wasted shelf life when it hits the shelf or the salad bowl because we harvested them the same day or night before from an environment where we can ensure every species of salad green we grow is grown exactly the way it should be. Every variety and spaced and placed exactly the way they like it, the dream environment for all of our produce to thrive and the inspiration for the name we came up for them, The Dreamy Blends.
I guess you could say we love lettuce. We love what happens when all of the beautiful colors and flavors in our world come together to make something so special, so unique, and such an example of what we hope to give to the world.
Thank you for reading this little story about lettuce.
Peace, Love, and Leafy Dreams.
With all my love and hope that you all find your own leafy dream
Amy
#StayLeafy
