L is for .....Lettuce Love

Up until the first few months of this year, lettuce was one of my favourite foods and I ate it almost every day for lunch, by way of  a nice big bowl of salad.  Not just lettuce, it was combined with lots of other salady ingredients, topped with balsamic vinegar and munched appreciatively.

This year, however, lettuce and I been having a bit of a stand off.  It started back in January, when I began having sandwiches for lunch instead of my usual salads.  I had watched OH daily making his lovely big ham salad sandwiches and couldn't resist them, so I would make my own version and before I knew it I had got right out the habit of eating salads altogether.

My waistline has suffered accordingly and as a consequence, since last week I've been making an extra special effort to reacquaint myself with eating salads again.  I'm doing okay and some of the extra weight is now coming off thankfully. 

I like to grow my own lettuce if I can, as the lovely curly red and green ones can be quite expensive to buy in the shops.  I've sown some lovely red lettuce at the allotment.  This is how they looked a couple of weeks ago.

 

I popped back yesterday and they looked like this.

 

 

 

 

I transplanted some of them so that they could grow on.  I need to go back and do the same for the rest of them, but I didn't have the time today.

 

 

 

I love this variety.  It is an early red butterhead lettuce that I buy from Lidl for 49p per pack or thereabouts.  They always germinate well and I get lots of lovely big heads of lettuce from each pack, which adds a bit of colour to a salad and incidentally saves me a fortune.  They do have a tendency to bolt if not harvested quickly enough though, once the weather warms up.  I'm hoping for a good harvest this year to keep my salad eating on track.

 

I'm happy to be back on good terms with lettuce again and hoping we don't fall out again any time soon.

 

Joining in with Mum from Mum's Simply Living in blogging utilising the alphabet backwards.