The lettuce itself remains popular in the United States. Short of heating up a TV dinner, there are few more blatantly retro gestures than ordering a wedge of iceberg lettuce covered in a thick, creamy salad dressing. "MARKET WATCH 6/23: Iceberg Lettuce," Jeanne McManus, The Washington Post, June 23, 1999, Pg. Iceberg-a head lettuce, as opposed to a leaf lettuce-is also known as "crisphead" lettuce since one of its chief virtues (some say its only virtue) is that it stays fresher longer than leaf lettuces." The wedge of iceberg drowning in a thick dressing was replaced with vinaigrette-tossed leaf lettuces (especially romaine) and smaller, more exotic "designer" greens, all more nutritional and more flavorful than the "neutral" iceberg. Quartered, shredded, its leaves pulled off and transformed into cups for canned pears, it knew no rival until the 1970s when Caesar Chavez called for a boycott to protest the working conditions of California lettuce pickers. Iceberg Lettuce Boycotted? "There once was a time-before the arrival of mesclun, frisee, endive, spring mix, packaged salads, radicchio and arugula-when iceberg lettuce dominated the produce aisle. ![]() Before that people had to depend on what you could grow locally and preserve from the gardens. Year around and all the way as far as Maine, as the train pulled into each stop, folks would call out excitedly, "The icebergs are coming, the icebergs are coming!" The name would stick. ![]() Using ice they carefully covered the heads of lettuce and shipped them How Crisphead lettuce became known as Iceberg lettuceīruce Church founder of Fresh Express, was responsible for popularizing the idea of shipping lettuce across the US continent from Salinas, California to the spots on the East coast.
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