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Spring Cleanup in the Culinary Herb Garden
By admin | April 15, 2006
Culinary Herb Garden Enthusiasts: Spring has sprung and it’s time to rake the leaves out of the herb garden. I love that wonderful aroma that wafts up when raking out the herb bed. When last year’s twigs snap and crunch up, they release that powerful essense that reminds me of the magic and power of keeping herbs. Perhaps it’s mint, thyme or rosemary that is your favorite. Mine is sage. Whatever the herb, the aroma released during that first spring cleanup is a great way to start the season.
This year, we are going to blog along with our herb gardening. Hope you like the commentary and tips that we’ll provide. We’ll be quoting from a great classic book on culinary herbs and offerring a daily reading from it. The book is from 1912 or so really focuses on introducing people to the growing and culinary usage of herbs. Of course, we’ve all grown accustomed to growing and cooking with our own herbs, but it’s great to revisit this classic. Hope you gardeners and cooks really enjoy it. This culinary herb lover really does!
Also, this blog will feature a lot of information on the uses of culinary herbs. We hope to have delicious recipes on each posting that feature the various culinary herbs. We’ll try to feature more obscure uses of both common and unusual herbs.
Let’s jump right into the beginning of the book with a look at the preface:
Today’s reading (from Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation, Harvesting, Curing and Uses)
PREFACE
A small boy who wanted to make a good impression once took his little sweetheart to an ice cream parlor. After he had vainly searched the list of edibles for something within his means, he whispered to the waiter, “Say, Mister, what you got that looks tony an’ tastes nice for nineteen cents?”
This is precisely the predicament in which many thousand people are today. Like the boy, they have skinny purses, voracious appetites and mighty yearnings to make the best possible impression within their means. Perhaps having been “invited out,” they learn by actual demonstration that the herbs are culinary magicians which convert cheap cuts and “scraps” into toothsome dainties. They are thus aroused to the fact that by using herbs they can afford to play host and hostess to a larger number of hungry and envious friends than ever before.
Maybe it is mainly due to these yearnings and to the memories of mother’s and grandmother’s famous dishes that so many inquiries concerning the propagation, cultivation, curing and uses of culinary herbs are asked of authorities on gardening and cookery; and maybe it is because no one has really loved the herbs enough to publish a book on the subject. That herbs are easy to grow I can abundantly attest, for I have grown them all. I can also bear ample witness to the fact that they reduce the cost of high living, if by that phrase is meant pleasing the palate without offending the purse.
For instance, a few days ago a friend paid twenty cents for soup beef, and five cents for “soup greens.” The addition of salt, pepper and other ingredients brought the initial cost up to twenty-nine cents. This made enough soup for ten or twelve liberal servings. The lean meat removed from the soup was minced and mixed with not more than ten cents’ worth of diced potatoes, stale bread crumbs, milk, seasoning and herbs before being baked as a supper dish for five people, who by their bland smiles and “scotch plates” attested that the viands both looked “tony” and tasted nice.
If this book shall instill or awaken in its readers the wholesome though “cupboard” love that the culinary herbs deserve both as permanent residents of the garden and as masters of the kitchen, it will have accomplished the object for which it was written.
M. G. Kains.
New York, 1912.
Tags: Culinary Herbs, Herb Gardens, Growing Herbs, Cooking with Herbs
This is a blog about growing an herb garden and cooking with culinary herbs. Enjoy!
Great links on herb growing and cooking with herbs: Ohio State University Extension Herb Cultivation Facts, a good herb growing guide.
Topics: Herb Garden |