If pressed, I would say that my cool season garden is about lettuce. Of course, there other favs like broccoli, cauliflower, snow peas, carrots and beets, plus a half dozen other crops. But lettuce is my passion and it’s key to my garden “art.” (See my About page).

The last of the ‘Little Gem’ lettuce, shown in the thumbnail, was harvested this week. ‘Dark Lollo Rossa’ and ‘Redina’ provide salads now.

Lettuce is the crop I reliably succession plant. From fall to spring I almost always have trays of lettuce seedlings growing to transplant size. In the kitchen, lettuce is the foundation of my creative winter garden salads.

Soon, I’ll be planting summer lettuce seeds—varieties that tolerate more heat and are slower to bolt. But truly, winter is lettuce season in my garden and I’d say in SoCal too.

About ten days ago I cut the last of the ‘Catalina’ spinach. Lacking the time to make my Galette of Winter Greens. I stuffed the oversized leaves in a grocery sack and stored in the fridge.

They fared well and over the weekend I washed and rough chopped the spinach into six cups of one inch squares for the spinach galette.

The galette recipe suggested a leek but a spring onion from the garden would do. After sauteeing the onion in olive oil, I added the chopped spinach in small batches for proper wilting. With fresh thyme, havarti dill cheese and a couple tablespoons of half-and-half the spinach mixture was ready for the pie-crust-in-waiting.

This might be my favorite meal from the winter garden. The greens are variable each year. I use what is abundant or urgent. It could be kale, arugula, beet greens or spinach and most often, some combination of these.

It is still early for the strawberries and some are misshapen or cat-faced. Hence, you see the best of the handful and the rest chopped for dinner. I couldn’t resist the juxtaposition of the delicious red fruit and the single rose petal discovered after a rain.

Arugula gone wild in the garden but it partially shades some lettuce so I let it linger. It’s also a fav of hover flies and other pollinators. I take a “bouquet” to @little_lion_cafe each week for their plating pleasure. Stop by if you’re near Sunset Cliffs. It’s a local culinary gem.

You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers around the world harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Happy Acres blog.

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