More About Bay Laurel Infused Sugar

This is a Ragu spaghetti sauce jar that I used for the bay laurel infused sugar. Eight fresh leaves that I opened slits in the leaves. Use 14 dried leaves if you wish. Three cups of sugar just fit into the jar. You then just shake the jar every day for two weeks or so. You can use it in the sugar cookie recipe I gave you in the January 29, 2009 posting. You can give the extra sugar with a copy of the recipe as a gift. The possibilities are up to you!

More Snow!

It was pretty peaceful on our street after the latest snowstorm. It is just one storm after the other. Not a lot of snow each time, but it is beginning to pile up! Getting closer to spring! Hope it gets here quick!

Bay Laurel Infused Sugar

We have two different kinds of bay laurels. This one is the more traditional one. Sort of a Y shaped form. Remember bays do better with trimming. We have the don't prune, don't shape policy at our house! Most everything has that wild over the top look! I'm going to make some infused sugar with 8 fresh bay leaves (14 dry) from this tree and layer them with 3 cups of sugar. Shake it every day. It takes about 2 weeks for use. Just in time for Valentine's Day! The recipe is on a blog that I found from Canada called Food and Whine. The recipe is for Infused Sugar Sugar Cookies. The only thing I would add to the recipe is to use pasteurized egg white at the end to brush on the cookies to add additional infused sugar. You can purchase a carton of pasteurized egg whites in the grocery stores in the US. I haven't tried this recipe so hopefully we will all enjoy them. Let me know what you think!

A Good Day for Herbal Tea!

It is a cold, icy and icky day in the 'Burgh! It is a great day for an herbal cup of tea. It is National Hot Tea month and I pretty much forgot. So I thought I would go out with a bang! I made this cup of herbal tea this afternoon. Some crushed lemon verbena, rose petals, lavender, stevia, peppermint, winter savory in my magic basket. I do get carried away. It was a little too intense. So I would combine lemon verbena with the stevia and peppermint or the rose petals, lavender and winter savory with some stevia. If you like sweet in your tea, you will love the dried stevia. It is very good. I only put one or two leaves in and it is more than sweet enough for me. It is fun to experiment and hopefully I will give you a few more ideas before the end of the National Hot Tea celebration. Every day whether it be cold or hot is a good day for tea!

Balance of Nature!

We looked out our front door window yesterday and got a picture of this hawk. It may have been a young red tail hawk. Usually the small birds leave the area when the hawks are in the vicinity. We have a lot of wildlife in our residential area. He is keeping the balance of nature.

Bay Laurel-2009 Herb of the Year

The container on the left in this photo is Laurus nobilis or Bay Laurel or Sweet Bay. This one is over my head and I'm 5'6" tall. Bay laurel is a native of the Mediterranean area. In ancient Greece, poets and scholars were crowned with wreathes of bay. Hence, the term poet laureate was coined.

If you live in Zone 7 or higher, you should be able to grow bay in the ground. Here in the 'Burgh, we have to have it in a container and take it inside during the winter. This one is about 6-1/2 feet tall. It is slow to germinate from seeds or cuttings (taking up to six months to root). So you should buy an actively developing young potted plant. Bay needs full sun and prefers dryish soil and avoid mulching. You do need to provide moderate moisture in summer, especially if you grow it in a container. It does best if it is pruned on a regular basis.

Bays are susceptible to mites, scale and mealy bugs indoors, but once they come outside, they mostly lose those problems. You need to be vigilante when they are outdoors that the scale or other insects do not reoccur. Here is an article by Sandy Feather on the treatment of scale insects which is the main problem for bay laurels indoors even though it is for a ficus tree the treatment for bay would be the same. More in the coming days.

Pomander Update

These pomanders don't look much different than when they went into this bowl weeks ago. I think the thick skin has impeded the drying process. Glad I didn't have to give them as a Christmas present. Maybe they will be ready for this coming Christmas! Hope so. Will be talking about the herb of the year, bay laurel later this week.

Brief January Thaw!

What a difference a day makes! 50 degrees yesterday and 18 degrees today! We got rid of some of the snow. Still have about eight weeks of winter left. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Quick Herbal Flavor!

We have been having great avocados from Chile this winter season. Our food comes from lots of different place in the world and different areas of our own country. I love a good herb mix. If you are lucky enough to live in Mechanicsburg, PA or Chagrin Falls OH, you have two great herb shops, The Rosemary House and The Village Herb Shop. If you are online a lot like I am, Penzey's has great herb combinations like the one in the photo. I sprinkle Tuscan Sunset on a lot of things, including avocados. It is a salt free blend. What is also great about Penzeys Spices is that there are suggestions for using their spices on each label. They also have a great catalog with recipe suggestions. A good herb blend is a quick fix for a recipe. Try it!

P.S. I missed National Pie Day today. I did find this link that you might like with pie recipes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website.