Pampered Chef salads could be good for your ears.

Pampered Chef Mix Measure and Pour, on salads, obviously

Whatever happened to lettuce?

When I was a kid it was just lettuce. Just lettuce. That's what it was called.  And with the lettuce went cucumber, half a tomato or two and half a boiled egg.  When visitors came around the egg might be sliced. On top of that for me went a significant amount of Heinz Salad Cream.  I don't ever remember being a fan of salad, but I was - and still am - a fan of salad cream.  Unfortunately as I keep finding, there's a time and a place to admit to these things, if you read my bit about fish and brown sauce.

Not that I turn up my nose at more adventurous dressings these days.  There's a great piece of Pampered Chef kit that I suspect is somewhat overlooked.  It's a salad dressing mixer that looks like an individual caffettiera.  It goes by the name of  Measure Mix and Pour which pretty much covers what it does and what you do, for that matter.

Around the sides of the cylinder are recipes for  a range of different dressings.  We've tried a couple at home and they're very good.  So, you put in fresh ginger, top up to that line with rice vinegar, add garlic then this amount to this line of olive oil and so on. When you've added everything, up and down goes the plunger with a bout of vigorous plunging, pour it out onto your salad, in the fridge goes the remainder.  I like it because I don't have to faff about looking for a recipe, it's a one-stop shop.

Olive oil, ideal for ears

Olive Oil for Pampered Cheffers

It's a strange one isn't it, olive oil?  Again, when I was a kid, olive oil was in the medicine cabinet and used to loosen your ear wax. One of those Sunday night rituals. Bath, Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the tele, and ears brimming with salad dressing. Odd.

Speaking of the tele, I see there's a new impetus in the salad dressing ads, new ranges of tarted up sauces.  One leading brand of mayonnaise now has a hint of caramelised onion, a 'twist' of pepper, a 'spark' of chilli, a 'hint' of wasabi.  Wasabi?  Now maybe that's quite clever, that could be a winner with a particular set.

'Salad cream?  Eeeeeaaawwooooo!  Mayo with wasabi you say? Oh yar, def. Squirt away, darling'


It's a bit like a few years back when 'hint of a tint...' was suddenly huge in DIY paint situations.

'Love the magnolia walls, so retro...'
'Errr, I think you'll find that's hint of a peach, thank you (sniff)'


But then everything has to be tweaked this days  to be what it isn't and never was.  My bathroom has to smell like an alpine forest or the Chelsea Flower Show, or else.

Lettuce leaves, a fashion statement

My lettuce must comprise of a baby leaf or two. No seems to complain that such leaves have been ripped from the hearts of their loving mother lettuce.  No, they're sweet and tender, so that's OK. It's now romaine, butter lettuce, endive, lambs, escarole, rocket, so on and so forth.  There's even beetroot leaves and sliced red cabbage in there. The thought of my mum putting cabbage in a salad beggers imagination.  Cabbage in our house was only consumed when it was given a damned good boiling and taught a lesson.  Then it was boiled some more until all the green colour had come out and was down the sink where it belonged. See-through cabbage was never a favourite of mine.

Salad eating weather

Lettuce, as in lettuce, is now the unloved Cinderella.  And to be fair, I've had to put some desperately limp lettuce out of its misery today and into the kitchen bin.  I didn't like doing it, I hate throwing any food away.  But it really was at death's door, mainly because - and this won't surprise you - it's been raining of late and is right now as I type.  Again. Not salad eating weather.  I'm sure what salad eating weather is but I just don't think it's now.

So I'm going to have to keep my Measure Mix and Pour in the cupboard a while longer. If you have any dressings left over, just waiting for the sun to shine, you could always put a drop or two in your ears to see if it shifts anything stubborn.

Probably best leave it until you need to liven up a leaf.

• PS, If you'd like one of those excellant dressing mixers, just leave a comment or send me an email.  Also remember, please repost or facebook or twitter this blog and please join the site on the right hand side.  You can also find me at mikegetscooking on facebook.