Cooking lettuce

I am way behind. Pretty obvious, since I haven't posted here in over a month. Meanwhile, heaps of produce from the CSA farm we belong to have been piling up in the refrigerator and on the counter. I managed to handle most of the tomatoes by canning a few pints of salsa and cooking a lot of sauce tomatoes into puree (which reminds me that I had better use the puree that's in the fridge or my hard work will be for naught). However, the greens are another story.

I adore greens, despite (because of?) the fact that I didn't taste most of them until relatively late in adulthood. My mother, although the daughter of a produce man, has a relatively limited vegetable repertoire, and I don't recall her venturing past lettuce and spinach. I still remember my first taste of watercress, in a Fairfield, Connecticut restaurant, probably in the early '80s. It was what they call a revelation. (I had to ask the waitress what it was.)  Since then, I've learned to love all kinds of leafy stuff.

No one else in my family loves greens, however, and things have been too busy lately for me to prepare them for myself. Also, I've been out of the house most lunchtimes, volunteering for a big event at my children's school. With that over, I found the fridge overflowing with lettuce, arugula, chard, baby bok choy, collards, and Chinese cabbage (not to mention other non-leafy veggies). I decided to tackle the first two for lunch today.

I perused a couple of recipes for lettuce soup. Basically, if I recall correctly, they involve sauteeing onion and/or garlic, then adding broth and/or water, potato, lettuce, and seasoning of choice, then pureeing the lot. They finish with a little butter or cream.

My concoction was similar, although I used leftover cooked rice instead of potato, and way too much lettuce and arugula for the amount of broth and water, just because I wanted to use it all up. It ended up a little too thick, but would have been perfect with some cream, if I had had any. I topped it with a little feta cheese that needed using (inspired by Giada de Laurentiis' suggestion of a goat cheese topping for her arugula-lettuce soup), and it was pretty good. If I do it again, I will add herbs. Rosemary might be nice with feta or goat cheese, and dill, parsley, or cilantro otherwise.

I still have a fair amount left, so maybe I'll tinker with it...