Lettuce Soup

When life gives you too much lettuce it is time to make soup and that is what happened to me yesterday. I had way too much lettuce. It has not been selling briskly enough at market so after the Tuesday market I decided it was time to do something with all the Simpson leaf and Rouge d'Hiver red romaine lettuce that was too old to sell (though it was still miles above the lettuce at Wal-Mart in quality. Why, to get it to Wal-Mart quality I'd have to leave it in the fridge another 5 to 7 days).

So I figured I'd stew a hen and make chicken stock and add lots o' lettuce to that. I started the hen about 7am and let her cook for 6 hours. Removed her from the stock pot and skimmed most of the fat off the broth and than added 5 pounds of lettuce that I had cleaned and roughly chopped to the chicken stock. Plus about 5 small chopped onions and some kosher salt to taste. Let that cook about 30 minutes than put everything in a blender and pureed it all. Than I added cream and milk to half the puree and adjusted the salt and it was done. The other half of the puree I froze (3 quarts) and that is why I did not add any dairy products (they do not do well in frozen foods). And now I will have some lettuce food for the future.

It was an okay soup, I have made better lettuce soup before. The red romaine was a bit bitter (which probably made it super healthy, bitter foods are generally wonderful things for humans to eat). Eugene suggested adding some sort of nuts to it so today when I reheated leftovers I added about 1/4 cup of cashew butter and it did improve the soup quite a bit.

The hen was turned into a yummy chicken salad.