A Taste of Spring

Late in the fall, I planted a couple of rows of corn salad as a cover crop in my raised beds. And then mostly forgot about them. Until tonight when I was wishing for a fresh salad and headed out with a trowel to see what I could find. Sure enough, there were these beautiful little rosettes, ready for the picking.

Aren't they pretty?

Corn salad, once considered a weed, was originally foraged by European peasants until the royal gardener of King Louis XIV introduced it to the world. Known by lots of names – mache, lamb's lettuce, lambs tongue, or field lettuce – it has three times as much Vitamin C as lettuce and is chalked full of beta-carotene, B6, B9, Vitamin E, and omega-3 fatty acids. Its tender leaves have a mild flavor, maybe with a bit of a nutty taste. To me, it simply tastes like spring.