Lettuce

By now, summer’s heat is either waning or scorching, depending on where you live. Whichever the case, memories of spring’s garden delicacies lie in the past, unless you walk into a Swiss grocery store to find one of these!

Yes, it’s lettuce. Three types of lettuce, to be exact. I won’t try to name them, particularly as they would be labeled in German, French, or Italian. My mother would have called them all “spring lettuce.”

Indeed, those are the Alps in the background. I took a heap of pictures trying to position the lettuces dramatically against the snow-covered peaks. Why in the world, you ask? I’ll tell you, but please know that this story does not have a pedagogical or moral point, so it’s up to you whether to continue reading.

Whenever I travel as speaker on tours, meals are included on the official days. Cornucopia-style European breakfasts greet us each morning (largely wasted on me, sad to say, since I choose oatmeal and not much else). Then comes either a hefty, delicious lunch or a hefty, delicious dinner, sometimes both!

When I arrive early for tours to fight-off jet lag, I eat from local grocery stores. Why pay for costly restaurant food when I’m about to be showered with meals across the tour days?

Beyond that, though, I adore grocery stores. They are the only type of store I enjoy being in. Roaming them becomes triply fun in other countries. Grocery stores are educational anywhere, but abroad they are like language-classrooms. They offer a real social experience, particularly since food shops in historic centers of European cities are small—sometimes incredibly small. Everything is present, but little space remains for bodies to move between the aisles. Shopping in them can be like a contact sport.

Most importantly, though, grocery-shopping in countries like France, Germany, Croatia, Poland presents a holiday to the eyes, especially when it comes to fruits (fresh Johannes-berries!), cheeses (glorious mozzarella balls at popsicle prices), yogurts (out with the glucose, in with the fruit), and every vegetable one longs for at home. As an example, glistening orbs of celery root are nearly always at hand, whereas here, in Winston-Salem, buying celery root (if one finds it) is more like an investment.

Now, back to the lettuce story. Before starting my last Rhine tour, I came early to Interlaken, the site from which we would bus to Basel for our voyage down the Rhine. Interlaken is not a bargain city. If you want a shock, shop in any Swiss store. Then go to Interlaken and complete the shock.

Still, I was pursuing my goal of “salad stuff for dinner,” which translates to lettuce, cherry tomatoes, an onion, and a can of chick-peas or tuna to dump on top (I don’t like dressing, so that cost disappears).

While shaking my head over the beautiful expensive lettuces in an Interlaken “Coop” (brand of store), I suddenly saw what seemed to be a rack of bedding plants. Picture a black plastic container with 3” x 3” cubes of dirt out of which might grow bedding plants like zinnias and petunias, but sitting right amidst the celery and peppers. Growing from that fragrant dirt was a verdant trio of lettuces, shooting to the sky. To my astonishment, the mélange was about half the price of an individual bunch of the same lettuces. I walked around a few times, wondering if the lettuce really was to eat. Or was it to plant? Or was it decoration?

Furthermore, did a shopper just pick up a single cube? Each cube was pot-bound with roots, and tucked inside of a simple paper wrapping like a bouquet of flowers, waiting to be presented to someone. I stayed five minutes to see if a fellow-shopper showed me the ropes, but none did.

Finally, I overcame my fears, scooped one up, added my side items, paid nervously for my goods, and raced back to my hotel room. First, I took a few pictures to document just how cool I thought it all was. (I know, that’s dumb.) But then I realized how pretty these lettuces were. (Already you see a conflict developing: was I actually going to eat this beautiful bouquet?)

Well, I did want to eat it, but first I needed to immortalize it, so I posted the “bouquet” on the wrought-iron table on my balcony. The view there was spectacular (I count my lucky stars when this happens). The weather was perfect. My goal was to get the lettuce to stand up with the snowy peaks behind it while catching one of the colorful parasailers drifting down right on top of it!

I didn’t achieve that goal: parasailers drop too fast and you don’t always see how they surf the wind. Still, I got some pretty good shots. Far too many of them. Be glad you aren’t seeing them all.

Finally, I had to make the decision. It was suppertime. Would I ravage this bouquet to eat or keep it as a decoration? If I’d been home, I would have done what is likely intended: cut the lettuce low for a salad, kept the base of dirt with its roots moist, and plant it to bring about more lettuce! Surely that would be the efficient Swiss way, right?

Don’t tell my husband, but I actually contemplated how I might preserve the cube throughout the 12 days of the tour and at least get it back to our little apartment in Weimar (where we have no garden, but that was just a detail). And I confess even more briefly to wondering if I could keep it going until returning to North Carolina. Don’t worry. That was a fleeting thought. As it was, an adorable US Customs-Beagle had a fit in the Charlotte Airport baggage claim about the residual fragrance from apples I’d carried a few days earlier in my purse!

So, I was rational. I cut my bouquet low along the stalks, tore these beauteous greens to shreds, topped them with my stuff, and had the best salad of my life. There was enough to make three salads but I didn’t let that hold me back. I ate it all! And when it was gone, I was sad.

Still, I had my pictures. And since no one really wants to see “vacation pictures,” much less vacation plant-pictures, I decided to write about it in this week’s essay and see what you might say. If you’ve read this far, thank you. The lettuce thanks you too. It’s famous now.