This week’s owner coupon is 25 percent off all salad dressings. Learn more about the coupon below.
What better season to save on salad dressings than local lettuce season? May is when abundant heads of lettuce and baby lettuce leaves appear in our stores, just begging to become your favorite salad.
Our Lettuce Farmers
For years, we’ve carried the first lettuces of spring from Maple Spring Gardens. Ken Dawson and Libby Outlaw run the 79 acre farm just north of Hillsborough in Cedar Grove. They’re pioneers of the organic movement and committed to the organic process but are not certified organic. More recently, we’ve begun selling lettuces from Megan and Keith Marshall of Nourishing Acres, also in Cedar Grove and certified organic. Megan and Keith farm full time, clearing fields, laying down row covers, planting seeds and transplants, building new hoophouses, and, when necessary, picking off pests. They harvest several times a week to deliver produce to our stores.
We also carry baby lettuces from Brett Evans of Red Hawk Farm in Hurdle Mills. Brett is certified organic and grows lettuce in both protected high tunnels and wide open fields. Since he has one major crop, he plans carefully, planting seeds every week. He monitors the weather reports, since a heavy rain can destroy tiny lettuces, particularly if they are covered to protect them from insect pests. He’s calibrated all parts of the process to work together: matching the width of the field rows to the spacing of the seeds, followed by the spacing of the irrigation system and the harvester. He disrupts weeds with a special tiller, and picks with a wheeled harvester. Efficiencies like these keep the price of the products down and reduce the labor required.
Our Dressings
All these lettuces cry out for salad dressing! What brands will you find in our grocery aisles?
Well-known, national brands include a wide variety of flavors from Annie’s, Drew’s, and Newman’s Own. Staff favorites: the Annie’s Shiitake Sesame and Goddess.
For fans of Bragg’s liquid aminos, the tasty substitute for soy sauce, we have Bragg’s vinaigrettes. These vinaigrettes are perfectly balanced and delicious. They’re made with olive oil, so be sure to let them warm up outside the fridge before you need them.
Primal Kitchen makes a line of paleo-friendly salad dressings with avocado oil. And for the romaine fans, we have Caesar Cardini’s original Caesar salad dressing.
With so many delicious dressings, the salad possibilities are endless.
Salad Recipes
Soon summer will be here with its ample tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. In the spring, though, a more seasonal salad might have fruit, nuts, and cheese. Try these combinations:
- mango, almond, and cheddar
- strawberry, pecan, and goat cheese
- fig, walnut, and blue cheese
They all work with your favorite vinaigrette. And remember, salad dressing can reach beyond the lettuce salad, as a marinade for fish, a dressing on slaw, or an easy ingredient in pasta or bean salad.
This week’s owner coupon is 25 percent off all salad dressings, good May 15-22, 2019. Owners, look for the coupon in our weekly e-news, sent on Wednesday morning. If you didn’t get the coupon, you may need to update your email address in our owner database. Contact us at ownershares@weaverstreetmarket.coop.
Not an owner? Become one today to receive the weekly owner coupon as well as the other benefits of ownership, like invitations to the Co-op Fair, a logo T-shirt and bag, and the right to vote in board elections. Learn more here.