What To Do With a Bolted Lettuce

Your favorite lettuce has bolted. You are sad. It is better to pick a lettuce a week too early than too late. But there are two things you can do.

You can give it the cold shock treatment. Wash the leaves in ice water, spin, and put in the fridge for a few hours. The leaves may produce sugars to sweeten them up as a natural antifreeze.

If the leaves are still too bitter to make salad, you can cook them as you would any bitter green (see earlier post). You can also try using the method for Stir-Fried Greens, Chinese Style (see earlier post).

If you don't like cooked lettuce, feed it to the chickens. You will get the beta-carotene back in their eggs. If you don't have chickens, I highly recommend it!