Up to my elbows in tomatoes.
Talk to you all next week!
Category Archives: recipes
Drying Herbs
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.
Pineapple vinegar….so what is the story?
I wrote a post in June about making Pineapple Vinegar…then I went silent….
Yeah, there was a reason that I never followed up on that.
While the vinegar was in the process of fermenting, and such, we went on a little three day vacation. While I was gone the water level went down, and since I wasn’t there to make sure the pineapple was under liquid all the time, the pineapple rotted. While it is normal and OK for there to be little bits of mold on the top of the water (just scoop it out with a spoon) I wasn’t comfortable with the entire top, and parts if the pineapple being moldy. I threw the whole thing out.
I consider this losing the battle, while I win the war.
I have successfully made pineapple vinegar twice now, and I consider a failure like this to be par for the course. When learning to be self sufficient it is a whole lot of trial and error. Some things turn out, some don’t, and things that may have worked in the past don’t always work every time in the future. It is all about the journey, and finding joy in it.
I did have a couple people want to know what I use this vinegar for. Mainly I use it in salad dressing, really anything that you would normally use vinegar for. I like it drizzled on chard or other cooked greens. It has a little bit different flavor than distilled or apple cider vinegar.
Mainly though, I love knowing how to do it.
Tea Time
Making Vinegar
I learned how to make pineapple vinegar last winter, but never blogged about it, and since I had another pineapple to cut up and eat I decided to make another batch of vinegar and share the process.
Vinegar making is very simple. All that is needed is some type of organic matter (usually fruit) sugar, water, air and yeast.
The great thing about making your own vinegar is that you can use then entire plant, instead of throwing away portions of it.
For pineapple vinegar, just slice a pineapple as you normally would, eating the fruit, but saving the peel and core. Give the peel a good rinse in water.
Then in a jar (I used a quart size and half gallon jar) add about 1/3 cup sugar.
Then some water, and stir it until the sugar dissolves.
Once the peel is rinsed, cut it up into good sized chunks.
Put it in you jars and add enough water to fill the jar and cover the fruit.
Then cover the jars with a cloth. Air needs to be able to get to the fruit, the natural yeasts in the air will start working on the sugar water and fermentation will start.
The pictures below are after three days. You can see that the liquid gets cloudy, that is good, it is part of the process. You can also see the bubbles that are forming around the top and inside the jar, that is also good, alcohol is being formed. To make vinegar we need to get past the alcohol to where it turns to vinegar.
Making vinegar can take several weeks depending on the temperature (it needs to be between 60 and 80 degrees) and how much yeast you have in the air.
There are also a few other considerations. Sometimes bits of mold will form at the top of the jar, at the water line, just spoon it out, it won’t hurt anything. Also water will need to be added as the days go along to compensate for evaporation.
I will keep you updated as things progress, and we will talk about the “mother” and why having vinegar with the “mother” still intact is a good thing.