%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
| I grow herbs on my back porch, mostly for fun. I've tried preserving them in the freezer, but end up throwing them out unused about a year later. I enjoy tending to them and smelling them. My dad wanted one of my chive pots and tried to recycle it. He felt like we didn't use the chives, he should have the box. I stopped him, but not before he threw out half of them. We have plenty of flower boxes. He just thought the chives were useless and I had too many. I have sage, four huge round pots. They come back every year, but only last about four years, so I've read. I enjoy the purple blooms as well as the smell of the leaves. I like to smell my hands after I've been pruning the plants. I do use the leaves for cooking. Some people can't see the usefulness of something so small. It's not like cooking greens or slicing tomatoes. Yet they enjoy the taste of the food with that little leaf in the pot. Sage is good with any kind of poultry, homemade sausage or other meat dishes. I've used them in vegetable dishes. The bases of the sage get kind of woody, the leaves never get very large. Some of my plants are about 18 inches tall, most less. I now have three and a half boxes of chives. I will try to transplant the half box, since I think it was the particular , pot he wanted, a box intended for other purposes but adapted for flowers. The chives have purple blossoms, too, but they don't resemble flowers. They're more like purple fuzz balls. You can eat the blossom, but unlike the green chive leaf, the blossom burns like a hot onion. The green blade is more delicate. In fact, you cannot cook the chives. You rinse them, dry them, and cut them with kitchen shears onto your fresh hot or cold dish. They have a very mild onion flavor.The blossom could be thrown into soups or chopped into casseroles or meat seasoning and cooked. Chives also come back each year but only for a few years. They look like tall grass when there are no blooms. I have to prune out the dead blades as the summer progresses. I'm growing tarragon for the first time. The leaves are slender. Mine aren't very tall yet, so I don't know how they will look eventually. I have harvested a few leaves. They smell great. Until this summer, I have only cooked with dried tarragon. A little goes a long way. Just a pinch will flavor scrambled eggs or an omelet nice. Two pinches will ruin it. I also have basil that are still young. They do not come back next year. It's a sweeter fragrance. I know from previous years that I enjoy just shaking the plants to make the porch smell nice. There are many uses for basil. I just found a recipe from the Mayo clinic for a healthy picnic salad calling for a quarter cup chopped fresh basil, so I will have that for July 4th. I don't have that many visitors, but some cook and like to take a little basil home with them. Fresh basil is not cheap at the grocer's. I have grown dill in the past. That's a fun one to watch grow, because it looks so different. The fragrance is another pleasant one, and you can add it to almost any salad. I wanted some this year, but couldn't locate the seed in the local stores. I keep trying to grow rosemary and lavender each year. Rosemary is very good in meat dishes. I have used it fresh, but not homegrown. Lavender is just for fragrance. However, each year, I have a different disaster befall them and they die at my hands. Rosemary will become a big planter (with a real gardener) and is worthy of landscape planter or actually going in the ground. It, too will last for years. I have a small batch of cilantro, my first attempt. They are growing fast and need more harvesting. I've done parsley before. They're similar, but cilantro is distinctive. If they're still growing when the local tomatoes come in, I'll make salsa. I love fresh homemade salsa. It kind of ruins you for the store bought stuff. I recently fixed potatoes for my father, both made up recipes. The first I sliced the potatoes and onions and boiled until just tender, with two sage leaves. I drained them, added shredded cheese, fresh tarragon, basil, a spoonful of milk and just cooked on the stove top until the cheese was melted. Then I added chives! He liked it. Another night, he had been asking about mushroom soup and how it would taste. I told him it was like gravy, and that most people use that kind just for casseroles. (There is the beef broth variety which is good as soup, but we didn't have that one in the pantry.) So I boiled potatoes with just a little onion and sage leaves. I mixed the cream soup with basil, a little milk, garlic powder, and cilantro--no tarragon. I mixed in the potatoes carefully, then put it all in a casserole and baked. Fresh chives went on top! He liked that, too. So, I check my plants almost daily, and tend to them. Whether I use them or not, I enjoy them. I can feel domestic and in touch with nature at the same time. |
 Log in to Leave Feedback |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
