An added Extra in the lettuce...

Last week my lettuce seedlings were too small to even pick a few leaves from so we bought a bag of leaves from the supermarket. I tipped out half the contents which were pre-washed on to a cutting board as I planned to chop the leaves a little as we were having homemade chicken fajitas for dinner. I then noticed something dark coloured had fallen out of the bag.

On closer examination, I saw that it was a 3inch (about 8cm) length of stick/wood, complete with borer holes. I decided that we would just have extra chopped avocado on the fajtas to make up for not having lettuce on the tortilla. I figured that it wasn't worth the risk of eating the leaves as who knows where the wood came from?

The next day I took the bag and stick back to Coles and got a replacement. They took my details but as yet I haven't heard anything. A friend of mine who is studying law commented and suggested I google a famous case in the UK, Donoghue v Stevenson , which has been called the 'snail in the bottle case'! And it did indeed make interesting reading. Ironically, this week the lettuce seedlings are ready to pluck a few leaves off each one.