A Quick Salad Before It Rains

The other day I dashed outside as soon as I got all the kids down for a nap to grab some salad greens since it was supposed to rain.
I put some Mache seeds in an empty bed also since the rain could water them in and I wouldn't have to drag the hose around. Mache is a VERY cold weather hardy salad green very popular in Europe. I learned about it in the "Four Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman (I LOVE this book). If you watch Top Chef, they've cooked with it a lot this season. They pronounce it "Mah-sh". I like to pronounce it "Maa-shay". I'm probably wrong but it sounds better.
Hopefully my seeds will germinate well. This is one of the few crops that does better when planted so late in the year like this without protection. I may cover it with a row cover when it gets super cold though.

Okay, on with my salad... picked some leaf lettuce...

and more leaf lettuce....

And some spinach....

Why does some of my spinach look gorgeous and some look like this???

And I pulled up a few carrots to cut up into my salad.

I don't have a picture of the finished salad since my camera batteries died and I was too hungry to change the batteries.

Evan woke up from a nap and saw the biggest carrot on the countertop. The other kids wanted graham crackers... Evan wanted the carrot... and only the carrot.

He ended up eating the whole thing :) I guess he takes after me. Mom says that I used to prefer a carrot to a cookie when I was his age. Not sure if the same thing is still true though.... okay, definitely not true!