Too much lettuce? Dressings and ways to use up a box

Eat the same salad for several days in a row and a whole box of lettuce gets dull. Change the dressing or the way you eat it, and it feels like a different meal.

Soft leaves or crisp leaves, which first?

Butter and oakleaf are softer, so eat them first, wrapped around minced pork or shrimp, or tossed into salads. Frill and flame are firmer and keep a little longer, good for cold dishes and sandwiches. Whatever has gone slightly soft at the end can be stir-fried with garlic, put in soup or fried into rice, and cooking it makes it easy to finish.

Three dressings that last a whole week

Three dressings are enough to rotate through a week of salads: vinaigrette, sesame and garlic soy. All three can be mixed ahead. Quantities and method are below.

• Vinaigrette: start with 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, or 2 to 1 if you like it sharper, and shake it in a jar. Method in simple vinaigrette lettuce salad.
• Sesame dressing: sesame paste with water, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and garlic. Add the water a little at a time.
• Garlic soy: minced garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil and sugar. Eat within five minutes of mixing, while it is still crunchy.

If you like something more Western, there is the Caesar-style salad with toasted bread cubes.

What should I do before dressing it?

Drain the washed leaves well, and do not skip this step. Raw lettuce is about 95 percent water, and wet leaves thin out a dressing in no time. Mix the dressing ahead and toss only when you are about to eat, so the leaves stay crisp.

To wrap, there are chicken breast lettuce wraps and shrimp lettuce cups. To cook, garlic stir-fried lettuce is off the heat in 30 seconds to 1 minute, and the lettuce and tofu miso soup goes in at the very end. All the recipes are on recipes and storage.