Rotting Lettuce: A Tragicomedy

This was supposed to be a blog post about classroom management, and structuring small groups in the rotary context for middle school, but I got sidetracked by a bit of a kitchen emergency…

A week ago, I was given a beautiful freshly picked head of romaine from an organic farmer nearby. When I got home, I put said head of lettuce, roots still attached, into a container of water on the kitchen counter, and promptly forgot about it.

Now, you might ask, how do you forget about a giant head of lettuce staring you in the face every time you walk into the kitchen? (Indeed, I had put the lovely Romaine in the center of the kitchen counter for that very reason, to call out to me and remind me to enjoy its fresh verdure for lunch this week.) 

Alas, the well-organized kitchen knows no enemy like a teacher in the midst of back-to-school planning! No, really, they should do a study on career teachers' brains a few weeks before school begins at the end of each summer… Half obsessed and with a crazed look in my eyes, I have been spending the better part of this week glued to my computer, brain racing furiously in all directions like the long tentacles of a deep sea jellyfish stretching nebulously through the murky waters of its ocean home feeling, feeling, and -- ah! -- finding every wisp of brilliant saliency, wrapping its fragile extension around said wisp and holding tight to it and a thousand others while its epicentre tries to absorb the nutrients from all the little bits simultaneously… 

But I digress. 

Back to the rotting lettuce. 

So, I had been sitting for some hours in front of my laptop, mapping out a mini unit on digital citizenship for the first week of school (yes, yes I'll post it soon!!!), when my already – long – rumbling stomach called out painfully once again to be fed. Despite my back to school obsession, my stomach's painful cry finally won out, and I wandered into the kitchen to see what scraps were left to eat; groceries were getting low, due to the fact that I was flying back to Toronto the next day, and had tried to carefully estimate how much food I might need, so as not to be wasteful.

It was then that the magnificent lettuce caught my eye… Or rather, should I say, its not-so-gentle aroma infiltrated my nose!

I leaned in a little closer and observed both by sight and scent that the lovely, green blossom was well past its prime. As I lifted the head of romaine out with one hand and grabbed the container of earthy, mouldy water with the other to clean up the mess, the stench that hit me was so repugnant I almost fell over at once, right there on the kitchen floor, lettuce and glass container still in hand. (I will spare readers a photo of the globby, growing science experiment that had begun to bond together bits of lettuce and glass container!)

I dashed to the kitchen sink, dumped everything inside and started running hot water and squirting dish soap, while a veritable army of fruit flies danced merrily around me. (While "flurry" what have sounded better here from a literary perspective, that would have been a wholly inaccurate descriptor; the sheer size of the infestation that had decided to make my lovely, organic romaine their home over the past week was enough to set up kitchen families that would disgrace the compost bins of every house on the island!)

The stench, oh, the stench!

And yet, the conservationist in me was desperate to salvage just a little salad from the ruins, for my lunch. (Ugh, when will I learn?!)

I chopped out a small and seemingly safe middle section of the lettuce, disposed of the rest, and moved to a less fruit-fly-infested part of the kitchen to see what I could concoct: while my nose valiantly fought the smell of rot and sewage, I pulled a few rubbery carrots out of the "crisper" to shred onto my little salad, and added some chopped and reasonably firm cherry tomatoes. 

A sprinkle of organic pumpkin seeds topped off the dish.

Alas, I am sorry to report there was no salvaging it… The stinking lettuce continued to permeate my nostrils even as I carried it out into the breezy screen porch to enjoy along with a fresh scone and what was left of yesterday's mushroom soup. 

I tried to pick at it with one hand while the other hand's thumb and forefinger pinched my nose while I ate, but the rotting lettuce penetrated even my thus-subdued taste buds!

Such a pity… Such a beautiful lettuce it had been… And such an incomplete meal I was now suffering, without any vegetables at all (The accompanying carrots and tomatoes now having been sullied by the lettuce rot).  :(

But, it could not be helped. Into the green bin along with its ancestors went the attempted salad, the resident fruit flies on standby, half of them already setting up shop in the compost bin, the other half threatening to make my PEI kitchen their permanent home. 

I closed the compost bin, and gave the door a might mighty kick -- hungry or not, I should've stuck at the computer with my back to school planning!