After an E. Coli outbreak scare in the US, many were wary of using cos lettuce - which mean Caesar salads dropped off the menu. It doesn't have to be that way though. The bright side is that the US crisis has given us a wonderful opportunity to talk about three other plant parts that make really excellent Caesars.

I hate to sound melodramatic, but lettuce and I are enemies. It's not that I don't like eating salad -- I do -- it's that I never eat salad fast enough before my lettuce gets "weird", as in "not technically inedible but kind of limp and not-so-fresh looking". This makes me feel like a failure, and I hate failure. Luckily, Jenn Louis has a recipe specifically designed for not-quite-salad-worthy lettuce, and it's called "lettuce jam".

Salad greens can start to go bad within a day if you don't store them properly. This salad spinner trick makes sure they get washed, and stay fresh for up to a month.

Wilted lettuce is usually thought of as the enemy of delicious salads, but intentionally wilting it (or "killing it", as it is sometimes called) with bacon grease is a thing of beauty.

It pains me to say this, because I'm lazy. But after the umpteenth outbreak of food poisoning from bags of freshly washed greenery, I think it's time we all stop eating bagged salads.