Lettuces for Less

Not sure if this should go in the Austerity Cook blog or here, but given it is about growing food rather than cooking, and concerns saving money, here it shall be.

We have a friend to thank for this tip. Thanks Louise.

Supermarkets sell cartons of 'living salad' for (in the case of Sainsbury's at least) £1. Buy one, harden the plants off with a few days outside and nights inside, then separate and plant them. We got 19 plants from one such container, all of which have proven healthy, and about half of which have been eaten already - they give you a quick start while your own seed-grown stuff is still on the way.

Another money saver that some gardeners won't be aware of: when you harvest a lettuce like this, leave a few of the outer leaves on the root, water it, and with luck you'll get a second plant in a few weeks.

Lettuce forms the basis of so many great things other than salads, so it's one of the must-haves in the garden. Cook peas fresh or frozen with a few leaves of green lettuce, some butter, and scraps of bacon fried till crisp and you have an approximation of petit pois a la francaise, a vegetable course in itself. They braise well in the oven too, again with a bit of bacon plus some stock to moisten things.

When you pay £1 a piece for decent lettuces in store such things can seem a bit extravagant; but when you have effectively paid about 5p for the growing salad jobbies they're a bargain. And if they are grown from seed we're talking a lot less than 1p each. Get growing.

Salads and Saving the World

Every working day I make my wife a salad for her to take to work. She works too hard and couldn't be relied on always to nip out of the office to buy something, and it saves us a fortune - her salad made with carrot, yellow pepper, ginger, and skinned satsuma segments today cost I reckon about 50p. Add a yogurt and a banana and it is £1 in total. From her university canteen it would be at least £3, from M&S maybe £4 for that lot.

The tongue-in-cheek title 'salads and saving the world' refers to the ridiculous amount of packaging a shop-bought salad would entail, some double wrapped with a disposable plastic carton inside a plastic bag. Her click-seal salad box has lasted two years, and shows no signs of wear.