Lettuce: Ingredient in salad for fast food meals

The lettuce is served as an ingredient in the salad accompanying fast food meals. Both leaf and head lettuces were commonly grown in colonial and early American times. Lettuce was highly perishable and was available only locally in season.

There is only one species or type of lettuce. Its scientific name is Lactuca sativa. It grows best in mild weather. High heat can kept lettuce from growing to this full size and can make the leaves taste bitter.

Lettuce became more readily available in the mid-twentieth century with the development of iceberg, which is typically topping on hamburgers, tacos, and other fast food; it is also the base for salads served in fast food chains. It has little nutritional value, with exception of some fiber.

The lettuce requirement had shifted from the iceberg type grown in the open field to the romaine and leafy lettuces that needed greenhouse or rain shelters for production.

The technology of rain shelter gives high harvest recovery at lower costs, and yields a highly differentiated product in terms of product safety because less agrochemical inputs are used.
Lettuce: Ingredient in salad for fast food meals

Cucumber salad

The cucumber, Cucumis sativas, is a subtropical annual originating in India. Domesticated by the seventh century BC, the cucumber soon spread to China and the ancient Mediterranean world.

Often referred to as a vegetable, the fruit of cucumbers is 96% water and its flavor comes from the edible seeds. Pickler cucumbers are paler green than slicer variety and sometimes have light stripes.

Cucumbers are frequently soaked in vinegar or brine to create pickles. It is thought that this practice gained popularity to overcome the bitterness of the rind of earlier varieties.

It is to find a home for cucumbers in salads and sandwiches. Traditional sandwich normally composed of paper-thin slices of cucumber place between two thin slices of crustless, buttered bread. The challenges occur how to get more cucumbers to fit into the sandwich.

Portable, quick, satisfying, cheap and requiring neither plate nor cutlery, the sandwich is the most universal of all fast food, the archetypal hand-held snack. The sandwich is simply the quickest way of making a meal.
Cucumber salad