It’s finally starting to get cold here and I wanted to save some edibles from my garden. On the left is lemon verbena and on the right is flat-leaf or Italian parsley. I washed all the leaves and they are on this wire rack to dry. I put the parsley in the freezer to use it in sauces. I dried the lemon verbena to use as tea. It makes a wonderful tea mixed with mint leaves. You can also chop up the leaves and put them into baked goods.
We’re getting rain after about a month of dry weather. I’m happy about it because I planted some seeds (lettuce, spinach, kale and *gasp* grass seed) and I don’t really like to water the garden. It’s getting cold here, so I have to cut down the basil and make batches of pesto to freeze. I can’t remember what temperature kills basil, but it’s somewhere above freezing. We’re down to the 40s at night, so it’s cutting it close.
I bought some organic garlic and am going to plant some this fall. I’ve never planted garlic before, so don’t know whether to believe or ignore the hype about buying seed garlic. I’m choosing to ignore the hype and just got plain old regular organic garlic. I think I need to wait a little longer to plant it, so it’s in the fridge right now. I’ll probably put it in after I chop down and prune my plants. Goodbye tomatoes. How I loved you!
I also saved some tomato seeds from my plants. I didn’t really research the proper way to do that. I just put a bunch of seeds on a paper towel to absorb the pulp. Now they are a part of the paper towel, so I’m not sure if I should pry them off, or just cut up the paper towel and plant it along with the seeds in the spring.
With the cooler weather has come more baking and knitting. I just made nutty oatmeal cookies from Mark Bittman’s book Food Matters. I didn’t use the vegan options and used butter and eggs. The book is interesting (think Omnivore’s Dilemma lite) and offers weekly menus and recipes. I seem incapable of menu planning, so I’ve decided to try some of his menus. The book emphasizes healthy, mostly plant-based dishes, so I wasn’t sure if the cookies would be good or taste like particle board. I was pleasantly surprised. They had chopped up dried apples in them instead of the usual raisins that my family doesn’t like.
As for the knitting, I am making a raglan sweater for Neil from wool I spun ages ago. I’m crossing my fingers that I have enough wool to finish it. This weekend we are joining our friends for a weekend in Woodstock, NY and a visit to the NY Sheep and Wool festival on Saturday.
This spring I went to a garden center to buy some herbs. I was intending to buy lemon balm, but somehow came home with lemon verbena by accident. If you are like me and never grew lemon verbena before, you won’t know how intoxicating it’s lemon scent is. I think it’s what they base the lemon-scent of most furniture polishes on. Kind of like when I tasted my first concord grape and realized, “Hey, this is the grape flavor they put in all the candy that never tasted like any grape I had ever eaten before”. Lemon verbena is used in a lot of perfumes because it smells so wonderful and happy and exotic. So, while I liked crushing it in my fingers to awaken the scent, I still didn’t know what to do with it. It also turns out to be an annual, so I had to figure out something sooner rather than later.
My first inspiration came when my friend Victoria came over. She’s a cookbook author, food-stylist and all-around food lover. She told me that I could put some leaves in sugar to infuse the lemon scent. Sounded wonderful. I also looked online and found a couple of other great ideas. One was for a lemon verbena and mint tea. You pick a bunch of leaves from both plants, put them in your teapot, pour in hot water and steep a few minutes. Don’t put in mint stems as it can make the tea bitter. The tea was delicious, light and clean tasting. Hmm…maybe that’s my association with the furniture polish again…
The other idea was to infuse vodka with the lemon verbena. Wash a few sprigs of lemon verbena well, drop in a clean jar and fill with vodka. Wait a day or two and then remove the sprigs. The vodka takes on a nice, light green color and smells wonderful. My husband makes me delicious cosmopolitans using St. Germaine (elderberry liqueur), but now we’re going to try it with the lemon vodka. We might try lemon drops as well. Intoxicating lemon aroma indeed!
