If I had to make a bed from one vegetable, it would be butterhead lettuce. Its soft, velvety leaves and bouncy heart would make a good mattress, I think. And, if I had enough and they’d never seen a fridge, the largest leaves could provide a floppy cover. My green bed would not only be comfortable; it would also be useful: despite modern conclusions that the milky lactucarium that seeps from lettuce stems is not a sedative, I’m with ancient doctors and hopeful that eating my cover would send me to sleep.
The ancient Egyptians – great cultivators of lettuce – saw it as sacred, though for different reasons. In
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