Drying Herbs

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Momzoo

This year I grew several herbs in our yard. The nice thing about herbs, is that they are beautiful to look at (for the most part) and can be tucked into general landscaping. Here are a few of the herbs that I have planted.

Chamomile

Lemon Balm

(aka Sweet Melissa)

Sage

Mint

Parsley

I also have a few other things not pictured: Chives, Comfrey, Yarrow, Lavender, Basil, Roses (yes…roses, a medicinal herb)

Today I harvested several of my herbs and prepared them for drying. They will be stored in old pickle jars in my pantry for those cold winter days, when fresh herbs aren’t available.

For herbs that don’t have long stems that are easy to gather and dry in bundles I use paper sacks. First I rinse everything very well in cold water and they them drip dry. Then I clip the leaves (sage happens to be what I am working on in these pictures) from the stems. Then I simply put them in a paper sack. Do not pack them in tightly, there needs to be air around the leaves, or they will rot instead of dry. Then I just sit them on my counter top, a couple times a day, when I think of it, I give the bag a shake, to keep things light and fluffy, so the air will circulate.

I use the bag method for: sage, parsley, chamomile, basil, and rose petals.

For other herbs, I do the hanging-upside-down method.

I am hanging Lemon Balm in these pictures.

First just gather up the stems and tie the ends together in a bunch. Make sure they are tied really tight, the plants will lose volume as they dry and will fall out of the bundle while they are hanging if they aren’t tied tightly enough.

I wash them when they are bundled up with cold water, then let them drip dry for an hour or so.

Then they get hung up in the kitchen, a bit of a seasonal decoration.

When everything is dry the herbs get stuffed into jars and stored in the pantry.

Gleaning, always gleaning

Posted on October 11, 2009 by Momzoo

I think I am glutton for punishment.

I can’t hear of someone who has leftover produce and I not volunteer to take it off their hands.

I now have three bushels of green tomatoes.

FREE FOOD!

I am going to use some of the green tomatoes to make “green tomato relish” and the rest will be packed away in the basement to slowly ripen and we will eat fresh tomatoes for the next few months.

The tomatoes that are almost ripe are sitting on my counter ripening, soon to be made into tomato sauce.

And the ripe ones, I bottled tomato juice for Dadzoo, he could drink a quart of that stuff a day (yuck!)

My friend over at Be it Ever so Humble has a lot of great ideas for using green tomatoes, don’t let them go to waste!

Apricot Butter

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Momzoo

For the past two weeks I have been elbow deep in apricots

and I am not even finished!

The first item I made was apricot butter. I it is pretty much the same as apple butter, except with apricots.

I started by chopping enough apricots to fill my crock pot.

I then added cinnamon and nut meg, any spice will work, it is all about personal taste preferences.

For sweetener I used honey, I just added it and stirred it until I reached the desired level of sweetness.

It is another one of those personal preference things.

I let it cook for about 6 hours until the apricots were nice and soft.

(I did a batch over night and it was a little too soft and went really brown, I wouldn’t suggest letting it cook all night)

I processed the butter in jelly jars for 15 minuets.

The kids say it tastes like peach cobbler
and I would have to agree.

Cup ‘o Tea

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Momzoo

Around these parts we had a very wet cold June, I think it was the wettest and coldest on record. (Global Warming?) Because it was so cold and wet there were many cool weather crops that got an extended growing season and some of our warmer weather plants had a chance to grow big and tall before they began to produce. Things like Melons and winter squash will be in short supply this year, they really can’t take a season shortened by four weeks, I am hoping the fall will be warmer than normal.

Because of this it looks like we are going to have a bumper crop of Chamomile this year, and not wanting to lose any or buy any this winter I set the children to work picking the flowers.

Since picking flowers is generally frowned upon at my house, they think it is fun to pop the blossoms off the plants.

I am going to dry these little babies and save them for cold winter afternoons. I seep a weak Chamomile tea, add warm milk, honey and the kids love it! It is a great way to warm the belly after an afternoon in the snow.

Questions, Questions

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Momzoo

For all of you who were worried about the snow on my flowers, today all the snow is melted off and the bright yellow flowers are big bright and blooming! Daffodils laugh in the face of freezing cold snow and rain!

Terri wanted to know the cost different between a can of chicken broth and my homemade jars. Well…..I am so bad at that, I read blogs all the time and their writers can calculate the cost of homemade foods down to the penny. I don’t do that. My brain cells are so not that way!

Anyway, I am a helpful kind of gal so I will try to figure it out a little here. Starting with the first ingredient: turkey carcass….I am going to consider that free, since we had all ready picked it clean and used the meat for several meals.

Onion….I bought a bag of 10 onions for about $1.20 (if I remember correctly, I am so bad at that) and I used two of those….so 24 cents?!

Garlic….two cloves, a neighbor gave a garlic bulb because she was afraid it was going to go bad…so for me that was free, but if I had bought the garlic….I don’t know how much that would be, but I am sure it would only be pennies….sorry!

Salt and Pepper…..pennies too.

Sage, Thyme and Parsley….I grew these in my garden, so I consider them free, I don’t charge for my time! How ever if you had to buy it I am sure it would only be a dollar or two for the whole batch.

Jars…..I have those on hand, the jars I used for this project I have had for many, many years…they have paid for themselves at this point.

Canner….I borrowed my Mom’s canner, so free for me. If you were to buy one you are looking at about 80$ But if you use it a lot it will pay for itself too.

Time….my time? Priceless!

So here is a quick run down:

Turkey-free

onions-0.24

Garlic-0.25

Herbs-2.00

Total-2.50 for 12 jars. Of coarse if I have to go buy the jars it would be much more, but I consider that an investment, and for me the herbs didn’t cost anything, so that takes it down even more.

I haven’t bought chicken broth for a long time, so I can’t really compare the difference I don’t know what a store bought can even costs. (The can I photographed was even past its expiration date!) For me it is more about the nutrition than the cost.

Hope that helped a little…if there is anyone who would like to be more scientific about it, please let us know what you come up with.

Terri had a second questions, she wanted to know if you could process chicken broth in a water bath canner. The answer to that is a big fat NO! Don’t do it, don’t attempt it. It is dangerous. The temperatures in a water bath canner don’t get hot enough to kill all the yucky bugs can can get in there, it has to be a pressure canner. If you don’t want to mess with a pressure canner I have also made broth and froze it, the cost saving s are the same and you don’t have to take the time to pressure can it, it is a great option if you don’t have a lot of time.

Happy cooking!