Scrounging for Supper

Tonight I went scrounging in the garden to see what vegetables I could find to make a salad. I already had two large heads of leaf lettuce that I bought at the grocery store. Even though we haven't had lettuce in the garden for quite some time, I also couldn't bring myself to buy lettuce until recently. (I think I've had a feeling of guilt because if I'd been more attentive and diligent to keep up with succession planting, we could probably still be harvesting lettuce just outside our back door. But I admit to many failings as a gardener, and thus we have no lettuce of our own.) So tonight I had store-bought lettuce, and I thought I could at least stick to complementary vegetables from the garden. Here's what I found:

Some purple carrots


A cucumber and a red bell pepper.

I planted my cucumbers late, so this little guy was my first one to harvest, and I probably should have given him a few more days. We'd been waiting on the pepper to turn red, and we really couldn't have waited a day more, as it already had a soft spot when I picked it.

Kohlrabi

Along with the vegetables I also had chickpeas, red kidney beans, sunflower seeds, and pears. (I was in the mood for a sweet salad with some fruit.)

So here's what we came up with. Millie's salad:


Everything except the kohlrabi, and she added a cherry tomato on top. She topped her salad with a raspberry vinaigrette.

My salad, which was exceptionally good:

I left off the kohlrabi, mostly because I thought it might be strange not knowing if I was taking a bite of kohlrabi or pear. The dressing is Cranberry Walnut Gorgonzola from Trader Joe's, which was excellent paired with the pears. I also left off the pepper because for some reason it just didn't seem to "go", and I figured Tom would really enjoy more pepper on his salad. I didn't get a picture of his salad, but he's the only one who ate the kohlrabi. Silas just ate carrots and pears for supper. I thought maybe he'd want to try some lettuce since he'd been so involved in working the salad spinner. But still no luck! Maybe next time. And Isaac? He enjoyed eating chickpeas and tossing them over the side of the high chair.