I is for Iceberg Lettuce

Oh, iceberg lettuce-the much maligned and much loved leafy green.

Iceberg lettuce, a variety of crisphead lettuce, has been an American favorite for almost 100 years. It was developed by the Burpee Seed company in 1894 and was grown commercially in California starting in the 1920's. In the early shipping days, the lettuce heads were packed in ice and looked like icebergs, thus the name. With its firm head, it was the only lettuce that could be shipped easily and was widely distributed over the US by the 1940's.  Usually it was the only kind of lettuce that could be found at most grocery stores. 

However, in the last few years, more lettuce varieties have become available and iceberg is being disparaged as nutritional wasteland compared to its darker green cousins. And there is truth to that with iceberg lettuce containing about 1/20 the amount of vitamins of other varieties. Probably because of this knowledge, romaine has outpaced iceberg lettuce in sales to become number one. However, iceberg is still a strong second. Iceberg lettuce may be the guilty pleasure of the lettuce world with its crisp, mild tasting leaves. Nothing holds its crispness better on a sandwich or works better with a big dollop of Bleu cheese dressing.

If truth be told, I prefer iceberg lettuce to the healthier (but more bitter tasting to me) varieties, and it is my guilty pleasure. I was happy that I had an excuse to buy it for this post. :)

Did you grow up eating iceberg lettuce? Do you eat it now?

Sources:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/tip-of-the-iceberg-our-love-hate-relationship-with-the-nations-blandest-vegetable-9074175/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettuce

https://www.verywellfit.com/does-iceberg-lettuce-have-any-nutritional-value-2506266

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-07-04-0706290893-story.html

H is for Healthy

 Vegetables and fruits are healthy. Or is it healthful? Somewhere, back in the deep, dark recesses of my mind, I think I remember learning the distinction between healthy and healthful. However, I've been confused by their usage for years now, so I think it's finally time for me to figure it out. 

After consulting Grammar Girl,  American Heritage Dictionary, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, here's the bottom line - healthy is okay to use in all circumstances. Healthful is used only to mean conducive to good health. Healthy can be used as a synonym for healthful as well as a healthy person.

"But wait," you say. That's not right. Healthy can only refer to a person (living), and healthful must be used for things (nonliving).  That was the preferred usage for a while. In the 1800's there was a big push to differentiate between the words healthy and healthful and that lasted into the 1940's but has been on the decline since then.  However, the American Heritage Dictionary says that both have meant conducive to good health for over 400 years, and today, healthy is used almost exclusively for both meanings. That explains why using healthy sounds right to my ears. And that simplifies things, too. If I use only healthy, I'll be okay.

Do you learn to make a distinction between healthy and healthful?

G is for Grape

Grape rhymes with ape which makes me think of giant apes, which makes me think of King Kong, which makes me think of the new movie Godzilla vs. Kong, which makes me think of the the article below, which makes me think of my nephew, Elliott, who makes me think of his father, Uncle Billy, who makes think of grapes because Uncle Billy not only grows blueberries, he grows grapes. 

If Godzilla Fought King Kong In Real Life, Who Would Win? We Asked Experts From The Smithsonian National Zoo

F is for Fruit Salad

E is for Eggplant

 

I don't have any pictures of eggplant, so I'm showing the pictures
 of what's blooming in yard right now starting with this lone crocus.
It has colors of purple and white the colors of eggplants. How's that for a stretch?

The first thing that popped into my head for E was eggplant. Eggplant is not something I regularly cook or eat so I don't know much about it. I do know that it's a member of the nightshade family (Solanaceae) and I like the purple color of the fruit. It wasn't until recently that I knew that one of the varieties was white and shaped like an egg, thus the name. 

This forsythia likes bright sun just like eggplant. 

I also know that eggplant likes to grow in hot weather, and we tried growing it once when we lived in Houston. From our experiences before in New Orleans, we knew that gardening in the south was very different than the gardening we were familiar with further north. New Orleans and Houston, both, had long, HOT summers that turned out to be stressful to many vegetables we were familiar with.

Nevertheless, when Wally and Theo were little, we decided to try some vegetable gardening as a fun and educational activity for the family. Ward built a raised bed for square foot gardening in the backyard that we filled with a load of garden soil from a local landscaping company. We planted okra, tomatoes, and eggplant - all vegetables that like hot weather. Everything came up, but nothing thrived. While things grew, most things were stunted and funny colors taking on various shades of purple. We weren't sure what was going on, so we had the soil tested. It turns out that the soil was too nutrient rich--enough so that it was harming the plants and the only thing to do was to keeping planting things in the beds until the excess nutrients were used up. We tired that for a few years with little to show for it and eventually gave up. However, all was not lost on the gardening front. Wally still talks about the prolific cantaloupe plant that grew from the compost pile one year.

When we moved to Maryland, we tried our hand at family gardening with more success, but that's a story for another time that does not involve eggplants.  

Eggplant would not grow well under the shade of this ornamental plum

These daffodil will be long gone before any eggplant will ripen here.

So will this one.

White eggplant, like the color of these blossoms on this Bradford pear,
is less bitter and smaller than purple eggplant.