Sure thing. And to be clear, this isn’t intended as some kind of gotcha example. As a native Northern Californian, this is more or less what I think of if someone brings up an oak leaf (including the spiky-rimmed variant). Obviously I’ve seen the “other” kind with the more irregular outline, but around here the small oval leaves are the normal ones.
I’d expect most people to recognize basil, bay leaves, lettuce and oak leaves — but oak trees are common in Canada.
Bay leaves, like cardamom pods - should be removed, but no great harm if they are eaten. None of the emergency medicine textbooks have a bay leaf section.
I choose spinach over iceberg lettuce if at a good sandwich place. And my favourite salads are made with a mix of baby spinach and other greens. But iceberg lettuce is fine, and good for many things. I can live without really bitter greens and radicchio no matter how trendy it was twenty years ago.
Out of curiosity, how many varieties look like bay leaves, oak leaves, or tree stems?
There are a large number of people incapable of functioning in the wild. Bay leaves could cause choking which would lead to emotional damage of biblical proportions.
Won’t someone please think of the incompetent?
In the mid 1980s, my brother and sister both worked at an independent movie theater that put real butter on their popcorn, not the butter-flavored oil that was used in most theaters even then, and almost every night, they’d have several people bring their popcorn back and say, “What’s this stuff all over my popcorn?”
:smack:
Bay leaves are removed before serving because the midrib may not always digest, and there have been a few cases of intestinal perforation from them. Ground bay leaf would be OK to eat, because it’s been powdered.
You’ve never eaten a a real restaurant?
Had Navy bean soup, or seafood?
This. Are Young People Today™ unaware of the hallowed custom of “The one who finds the bay leaf gets to kiss the cook”? 
I knew how to recognize the bay leaf even back when Mom or Grandma had to lean her cheek down to my high chair for me to collect my prize.
His article about the “actual female zombie” attacking a McDonald’s is still up on his website.
No.
No.
Sure. From McDonalds, Burger King, and Long John Silvers. Microwaved frozen fish at home.
Really, for me food is something I eat with one hand while holding a book or mouse with the other. I buy cheap stuff, finish it quickly, and don’t think about it much before or after.
I doubt there have been many cases of intestinal perforation from bay leaves. Our distant ancestors likely ate worse. Sure, it may not get digested.
For the love of Og, can we all just concede that swallowing a tough, woody, bay leaf is a bad idea, and get on with the interesting part of the conversation?!?
It’s uncommon, but it’s happened.
Man, I thought MY existence was pointless. A good meal is one of the few things I thoroughly enjoy in life. YMM obviously V.
So is iceburg lettuce.
Here’s a food hack. Use the soft green type of lettuce on a taco. Put it in between the shell and the meat. It stops the shell from going soggy.
Well, as interesting as unrecognized bay leaves in Chipotle bowls can get. Guess people don’t cook anymore.
You don’t say it specifically, but are you claiming that celery is flavorless to you? Because it sure isn’t for me. It has a more “raw,” grassier version of the flavor you get when you cook it. It’s also quite stringy and annoying to chew.
I can’t recall ever seeing more than a few tiny pieces in a salad, and most places I know that sell salads don’t include them. Definitely not enough to replace any kind of lettuce.
I also don’t think the texture is similar. Iceberg lettuce is either thicker, when you get it in clumps, or much thinner when you get it in cuttings.
As for the bay leaves: I suspect knowledge of what they look like is regional. They just do not feature in my cooking at all, nor the cooking of my family. We finally picked up some dried ones in a bottle recently, but they don’t look that much like the leaves in these pictures, being narrower and completely dried out. Oh, and all green and whole, not like they’ve been picked from a plant behind the restaurant.
Sure, I’ve had stuff that was flavored with bay leaves, but the leaves were always removed before serving. So cooking with them would be the only way I would be familiar with what they looked like. And I’ve literally never made a dish with bay leaves. I suspect that a lot of these people don’t even cook for themselves–if you have the money, it seems a nice option for all but those who love to cook.
In short, it doesn’t surprise me at all that these people weren’t familiar with it. I didn’t realize it at first, and wouldn’t had I not been primed to think there was something weird. “Oh, those are probably what bay leaves look like.”
That said, I would probably try to google before saying anything on social media, because I’m fully aware there are tons of foods I am not familiar with. Still, I might also be the type who would try to eat it, not realizing I shouldn’t.
No, the flavor of celery is quite subtle (when raw), but it’s definitely there. In other words, celery has a little more flavor than iceberg, and a lot more texture.
And no, there’s usually not as much of it in a salad, but there’s no reason there couldn’t be. If you even want crunchy salad: I’d rather use spinach or the like for the base, anyway.
I asked Mrs. J. to stop putting bay leaves in the spaghetti sauce.
Any added flavor is undetectable, and it looks like a foreign body in there.
Scene: FCI Training Center, charity Spaghetti Dinner, 1970
Mr. Seavers scooping Spaghetti Sauce onto my plate of noodles,
“Hey, you go the Bay Leaf. Better eat that. It’ll make your pecker hard.”
So, there is that…