I forgot to mention that earlier this year, I swore off store-bought lettuce & salad greens, especially the prewashed-mixed-leaves-in-a-plastic-bag variety.

Let me be perfectly clear – these pristine baggies used to represent for me all that was healthy and good for you. Salads for all! No excuses, it’s so convenient! Look at this variety of dark leafy vegetables, what’s not to love?

After reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, bagged leaf lettuce in the store morphed from the ultimate health food to the posterchild for industrial agribusiness (organic or otherwise), and a symbol for what I am ever so gradually trying to get away from. Like so many “convenience” items, savings for me meant higher externalized costs elsewhere, namely in the consumption of fossil fuels. No more! During the summer, I got my fix through what I could grow, supplemented by the occasional head of leaf lettuce from one of the local farmers markets.

Let’s be brutally honest. No lettuce producers noticed my protest. No, my actions haven’t changed the world. It’s a purely symbolic move, but dammit, lettuce is one thing I can provide for myself!

At least, until I couldn’t.

Given the untimely demise of my winter garden, I had to find another way to boycott bags of leafy greens.

Behold: chickweed!

Mild flavored, crisp textured – a perfect substitute for my salad green needs. Did I mention – extremely cold tolerant? And that it’s a prolific weed that actually grows in thicker when I harvest cuttings from several plants, rather than pulling individual plants up by the roots?

What’s not to love, indeed? Let the store-bought salad greens boycott continue!