Get Warm With Your Iceberg Lettuce

If you are sitting in your back yard with a salad as the evening turns to night, you may become a bit chilly. Although the name ‘iceberg lettuce’ is figurative and does not refer to a temperature, salads are generally served cold. This is why it can be so refreshing to light up your fire pit when you have that metal bowl on your lap.

People who are devoted to salad are often involved in an exercise regime. You will feel warm while working, but you might feel chilly after it wears off. If you have a weight-watching group or exercise club for moral support, you will probably want to be strategic about adding heat. You’re all going to be perspiring quite a bit as it is. But once the workouts are over and you’re relaxing with a salad, the peaceful orange and yellow spikes could be a nice way to calm the group back down and lower your heart rates.

In an autobiographical comic strip published in _Streetwise_, the renowned artist Nick Cardy recalled growing up in New York’s Lower East Side. His recipe for black baked potatoes: put a potato inside a tin can with hot ashes, shut the lid, and twirl. Now potatoes are only nominally a salad ingredient, but if you were feeling adventurous or you were a historical-recreation fan, you could try the same trick with your fire pit.

It would probably also be interesting to try the Cardy method with other salad ingredients typically served cold. Even spinning the can around would be good exercise. It might even be good for your Cardy-o-vascular system. You might want to remember that cooking tends to destroy the vitamins in vegetables. They are better for you raw. However, there is no reason you have to remain chilly while eating them. The complex patterns and mystery of a nighttime fire in your fire pit could even make an interesting color contrast with the greens and reds of your salad.

In addition to diet and exercise, health-conscious people are also often hyperaware of sleep and hydration. Warmth and dark are two things that make us fall asleep more easily. With a salad and a fire pit, you will be well on your way to covering all of the bases of a healthy lifestyle.