I made two more salads from the lettuce on balcony. The mini lettuces grew a bit bigger than expected but do deliver 'one head per person', which works out great for me.

The first salad I made with one head of mini oak leaf lettuce (weighing in at 74 grams) and some loose leaves (24 grams)[^fn1], and a bunch of rucola flowers. They seem to grow well and the flowers taste sweet. I chopped up some tomatoes and orange bell pepper from the store, and added some chunks of marinated artichoke-hearts. To give it some more protein, I added salad cheese (like feta, but lighter).

The second salad I made with another head of oak leaf lettuce (69 grams) and some loose leaves (20 grams)[^fn2] . I also added rucola flowers, and some red leaves(HG) to give it more colour. I used mostly water pepper which tastes a bit spicy, very nice, and added the rest of the orange pepper. For protein I grilled some shrimp for ten minutes or so in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, chopped scallion(HG) and some parsley(HG).

I try to add more protein to my salads currently. As far as animal protein goes, I can only stomach(pun very much intended) seafood, cheese, eggs and sometimes a bit of yoghurt, which I'll use for the dressing mostly. Luckily for me they don't cause any allergic reaction, so yaay for that :)

I seem to do much better with a mostly vegs and fruit base, which brings on some interesting challenges. On the very good side, it doesn't fill me up very much.

Maybe next time I'll draw the shrimp before grilling them. Or after, since they have to cool down anyway...

Total harvest: 187 grams of lettuce, woohoo!

[fn1]: a total of 98 grams of lettuce

[fn2]: a total of 89 grams of lettuce

Today I made another salad from balcony-greens. I've lost track of what greens exactly, though I know I had cut-and-come-again lettuce, some chard, some purslane (I think), and some herbs. It also had a surprising nice amount of fennel in it, which gave the salad a fresher taste. I added some cherry tomatoes(SB(StoreBought)), some chives (HG(HomeGrown)), some salad-cheese(SB(StoreBought)) and a hardboiled egg. Added a blob of slasaus (best described as Dutch salad-mayonnaise) and a few dried herbs, pepper and salt.

As an extra I added a few of the rucola flowers that started growing on the balcony. They made it look pretty and tasted good too.

Can't wait for the Indian Cress and violas to flower so I can start add them too!

Today I made another salad, a great way to let of some steam creativity wise. I read somewhere salads look (and taste) better if they have more colours, so I added some yellow and red and brown to my greens.

I've grown some lettuce (cut-and-come-again variety), and today I started eating it. I cut off about 15 grams of it, and added some arugula and garden cress for flavour. I also tossed in a sprout mixture of fenugreek, mustard, daikon and horseradish (last three all fairly spicy). I found some leftover sweet bell pepper (yellow) in the fridge, along with a few cherry tomatoes. After I added those I still felt it needed some more. I chopped up some shiitake mushrooms and grilled them with a sauce of soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil (very tasty by itself btw).

When the mushrooms cooled down a bit, I plopped them on the salad and used the small oven-dish to mix up some more soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar. I used this as a dressing over the salad, preparing it in the used oven-dish gave it a bit more of a grilled taste, very nice!

I have sown plenty of salad-greens and decided I could use a challenge (oh yes, another challenge!). I want to try my best at not buying any salad greens in the store until at leas way into autumn. This excludes eating out, but includes all salads at home :D

I should get my box of shiitake mushrooms started soon too. It will take a while before I can use my own tomatoes and peppers in my salads, however, I have a lot of greens already. I like salads, I should manage to pull this one off :)

--p.s. recipes for salads and dressing very welcome--