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!
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!
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!
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.
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. 
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.
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!
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!
Here are the spoils of herbal and vegetable harvesting! A jar of dried dill, very easy to dry and keep for winter use. We had tons of Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes! They are our favorite cherry tomato.
Most mornings we have crows sitting up in the trees around our house waiting for treats. They call each other. They are a very unified bunch. When the Herbal Husband puts scraps out for them. The crows come immediately, but they jump back when they try to pick the treats up. They think they are alive! This one on the birdbath was softening a peanut!
Find something to make you laugh today!
Today is a very important day for the Obamas, the Bidens and the United States of America. I have been working on this Capitol for quite some time. The Herbal Husband became a United States citizen in 1992! I was hoping to get this done sooner, but maybe there is a reason why the sampler has not been finished until this year! Yes, we can!
This picture is of my herb garden. It would be nice to keep some of this snow cover for a while. It is protection from the cold wind and an insulator.
We got about six total inches as seen on our stone bench on the patio and in the stone container.
I know it is a little late to be discussing Christmas gifts, but I was really spoiled by Santa last year. I am a book collector and one of my passions is books about the language of flowers. Santa took that hint and got carried away. Last Monday I went out to the mailbox and had to sign for a package from Argentina addressed to the Herbal Husband. Instead of it being for him, it was for me! Surprise! It was a very nice language of flowers book in Spanish. It has really nice bouquets of flowers on the inside pages. I'll have to learn more than the bad words in Spanish! I do know more. I know how to get to the bathroom! That's very important! More books tomorrow.
Well, last night was the coldest night in 15 years! It was minus 7! Fifteen years ago it was minus 22! When the Herbal Husband and I met 25 years ago, we were watching a PBS special on Railways of the World one evening. The program was talking about the railways of Peru. The one statement that stuck with me is that Peruvians enjoy eating! The Herbal Husband loves to eat and cook! Soooo we enjoyed the tropics indoors with a little Peruvian speciality for lunch. Shrimp cocktail, Peruvian style! Yummy! The avocados from Chile have been wonderful this year. So to spoil me a little bit more, the Herbal Husband mixed some thawed chopped shrimp (you can leave them whole if you wish) with some light mayo, salt and pepper, granulated garlic and some frozen peas and carrots, slightly cooked. He placed that on top of the avocado, but you can also chop up the avocado and place the entire salad on a plate (or back in the skin of the avocado) with a lettuce tomato garnish. Chopped scallions and parsley are sprinkled on top. Makes you think of summer on a very cold day in the 'Burgh!
It's really hard to see in this picture, but there is a beautiful male cardinal sitting in the middle of the sunflower feeder in the herb garden. Click the picture to enlarge it. We have several pairs of cardinals who come and eat with us every day. Some times there are up to four pairs feeding at one time. They have their fights, but in the end they find a way to coexist together. I love that the male and female cardinals both sing. Mostly it is the male in the bird species that sing. Cornell University has a great website for all things bird. The picture at the bottom is one of the females that comes each day. They are very comical with the tuft or crown standing up when they become alarmed. We enjoy all the birds that feed at our house, but the cardinals in winter are particularly beautiful.
It is going to get a lot colder this week. There is now a layer of snow on the ground and that has a benefit in the herb garden and in the garden as a whole. The snow is acting as an insulator. As long as the herbs you planted have good drainage meaning the soil has been tested (you can get a soil test kit from your county extension office or local nurseries have soil test probes for sale) and amended for the particular herbs you have planted. The best amendment is your own compost or the bagged kind works as well. We have clay soil in the western Pennsylvania, so amending the soil is a given. If the soil is amended properly, and the plants do not hold water around the crowns or roots of the plants, the perennial herbs such as lavenders, sages and thymes will survive the winter. Hope you are staying warm wherever you may be!
Every morning the Herbal Husband whistles and feeds the birds. Here is the peanut caddy in our Japanese maple. The blue jays, cardinals and titmice love it. The caddy swings back and forth for several minutes. It does not take long for the peanuts to disappear. This next story is entirely true. We also feed a group of crows. They will come below the caddy and wait for any peanuts that drop to the ground. On occasion, the blue jay will toss a peanut to the crow and the crow catches it! I'm not making it up! I'm just sorry you have to imagine it. Maybe some day, I'll get a picture or video of it happening! Remember your feathered friends during the winter.
Winter is cold, snowy and gray in the 'Burgh. Now it is icy today. We had mostly frozen precipitation yesterday. It could have been worse and been snow. We would have been buried today! Fortunately the low tracked further south or north and we were spared. We're supposed to have the coldest weather of the year so far this week. I hope the forecasters are wrong! Stay warm wherever you may be!
This peppermint scented geranium that was doing so well only a few months ago has collapsed! What a difference a few short months makes here. It was in our basement and there is not much of a light source there or it is covered by other plants searching for the light.
These Logee's Snowflake scented geraniums and the sweet lavender are doing very well in the garage. The magic recipe is the southern exposure and the cooler temperatures in the garage. I'm going to try to move other plants that aren't doing as well in here, but there is only so much room. The Herbal Husband's car is taking a majority of the space! The negotiations will begin!
I was thinking the other day that you should get a picture of how the indoor herbs are doing. You saw the lemon verbena. This is the old fashioned rose geranium. The Herbal Husband couldn't stand to leave it die back. It is slowly losing its leaves. It probably be good to put it in the magical garage with the southern exposure windows. Herbs in the winter need all of the light you can give them. I will show you tomorrow some plants that are in the garage and are doing well.
The Herbal Husband ate a lot of stews in Peru. He makes one called seco con culantro. It is a meat stew with meat cubes, potatoes, peas, sherry, lemon and cilantro. I'll do a post on that wonderful stew soon. The one I made here is called Garlic Orange Chicken. It doesn't sound like a stew, does it? I found it a while ago in The Herb Companion magazine, August/September, 1991. It is served in the magazine with vermicelli pasta. I served it last night with couscous and those new year's lentils. The Herbal Husband loves the sauce for the chicken. In fact, he puts it on the rice we usually serve with it! So here is the recipe and my thoughts on it:
Epiphany means appearance and it is claimed that on this occasion Christ was revealed as divine to the Gentiles. On Christmas Eve, the Kings are moving closer to Bethlehem and when they finally arrive, they offer their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Originally, January sixth commemorated Christ's baptism. Twelfth Night or the Eve of Epiphany was originally a pagan celebration.
The plant in the center of this picture is my lemon verbena. My namesake. It really shouldn't look like this. It usually drops its leaves when it comes in for the winter. This year it went to the garage for a week while we were in Arizona. The magical garage, cooler temperatures and that southern exposure. I'm going to start removing leaves and use it in tea or tea bread. Click on the link for the recipe. Hopefully, it will continue to do well. Just the smell of the leaves is a great stress reliever.
I was bragging about this rosemary several posts ago. It was blooming and happy. Now I'm not sure it's going to make it. The Herbal Husband loves his plants and maybe loves them a little too much. There is a fine line with a rosemary of overwatering or underwatering. Underwatering means you have a dead rosemary, but overwatering is equally as bad. This is a perennial problem in our house because I water differently than the Herbal Husband. He waters more frequently. I water after sticking my finger into the soil to my second knuckle and watering only if it is dry.
I will leave you with an article written by my extension agent, Sandy Feather about rosemary care in the winter. We should have taken her advice. Hopefully this rosemary will make a comeback! I had a discussion with the Herbal Husband and we are going to move it to the garage tomorrow. It's a step forward!
The catalogs have just started to roll in. This catalog from White Flower Farm was one of the first sources for perennial plants I used when I started out in gardening 19 years ago. Their plant descriptions taught me botanical names which I needed to learn. They have added fruits and vegetables, including 145 varieties of tomatoes. I bought The Works of 100 mixed daffodils many years ago and they are still flourishing today. I look forward in the spring to seeing them pop up through the leaves!
The US has a new sweetener on the shelves and it is made with stevia and called Truvia! I've tried it and love it! It's not cheap, but affordable, $3.99 for 40 packets. Each packet contains two teaspoons. I used it on my oatmeal this morning. The herbal husband remarked that it must be good if it made the oatmeal taste good! Visit my earlier post on stevia.
Even though it is known as a biblical fruit and from the Mid East, all of the pomegranates Americans eat are grown here. It is the perfect diet (an ugly four letter word) food, because it takes a very long time to eat them. The word, pomegranate, derives from Middle French, pomme garnete, literally, seeded apple. I ate all the seeds, the Herbal Husband spit them out. More fiber eating the seeds! The red liquid is really delicious! There are lots of products, especially drinks, made with pomegranate juice. The juice can stain clothing or countertops so you need to be careful when eating it. Pomegranate is a good luck food as well.
So it has all kinds of bonuses!
