Making Bouquet Garnis

 
I am off to the garden today, and I am gathering herbs in my basket for making bouquet garnis. 

I have chosen to do this from The Herbal Yearbook for my July project. 

A bouquet garni is just a bundle of herbs tied together to go into your cooking pot and season your food. 

I have chosen to use parsley, thyme, and two bay leaves for my bouquet garni.

I have a spool of butcher's twine that I am tying the herbs together with. That way, the herbs can go right in the pot when used.

Here is a finished bundle.

It is ready for the cooking pot. My favorite recipe to use herbs like this is Instant Pot French Dips.  The combination of herbs for that recipe is bay leaves, thyme, and rosemary. You can use any combination of herbs you wish to complement your dish.

In Victory,

Sherry

The Mezze Platter

At the end of this year, I went all Mediterranean with our food, so the obvious choice for a party platter was the mezze platter. Mezze is a series of small dishes served as appetizers, all originating from the Mediterranean. 

I don't know a lot about this type of food, but, I love to try new things. So, don't consider me very experienced at Mediterranean cuisine, but I have a lot of fun cooking it. The thing I noticed right away is there is more assembling rather than long, complicated recipes and techniques for cooking. I liked that. It is also fresh food and one of the most healthy diets you can eat. 

Here is what we had on our platter, and I will give you the link to the recipes. My sons loved it! I did add an American smoked cheddar cheeseball, which used to be a staple for our holidays, and no one touched it! It was funny; everyone embraced the Mediterranean-style appetizers with eagerness. Here is the link I used to create my own mezze platter. In this picture are marinated olives, crostini, and regular salted mixed nuts.

In this picture is whipped feta spread, but I subbed ricotta instead, and it came out beautifully.

This is regular hummus from the local grocery store topped with marinated chickpeas.

In this picture we have cherry tomato caprese salad. I don't know if you would find this on a true mezze platter, but it was so pretty I couldn't resist.

This is the rest of the marinated chickpeas. 

Homemade pita chips are on this also, but they are not pictured. Here are also sliced raw carrots for dipping, orange slices, and a cluster of grapes. Now I was going to round out the year with my last post in a series I was posting about using the herbs from my garden. I got this idea from the book The Herbal Yearbook. I have posted ideas from this book for the whole year, but the book is from 1994, and I thought doing something more modern would be a great way to end my herb series for this year.

So how did I use my herbs in this new style of cooking? 

The question might be better stated, how didn't I use them? The Mediterraneans are freely using lots of herbs. So, I found all sorts of uses for the herbs I had saved from the garden this year!

I used dried oregano and basil crushed into a powder.

I made bouquet garni and I had them in the freezer. So I used the frozen thyme in place of fresh.

I used some rosemary I had started in an herb propagating post and stripped some leaves of it for this mezze platter. This rosemary has doubled in size too! Just growing in a south window over the winter.

I also chopped down all of my parsley right before our first freeze. I took it off of the stem and used herb scissors, then froze it all. I had a lot of it. I used this to garnish the marinated chickpeas. 

So for 2024 I really found a lot of uses for my herbs. It was a great year of projects and learning. 

I wish everyone a wonderful 2025 and many blessings!!

In Victory,

Sherry

Home Sweet Home #67

Hello and welcome to Home Sweet Home!  Today I am going to show you around my little herb garden.  I have always enjoyed cooking with fresh herbs.  I have had a garden right out the back door for a long time; but, four years ago we remodeled and it was destroyed.  Just this year it is finally getting back to having a good variety of herbs in it for cooking.

These are the top 7 herbs I use the most.  You could choose any 7 but, these fit in with the foods I cook most often and I will tell you why.  

Rosemary has needlelike leaves and a piney scent.  Best used with meats and especially when grilled.  May also be used with mushrooms, roasted potatoes, stuffing, olive oil, and on breads.  One of my favorite recipes to use rosemary in is Butternut Bisque.

Thyme has tiny leaves and a minty, tealike flavor.  There are many varieties such as lemon, orange, English, and French thyme.  It is a essential herb of bouquet garni.  It is excellent with fish, shellfish, poultry, mushrooms, potatoes, and summer squash.  My favorite recipe with it is Thyme-Sauteed Pork Chops.

Parsley is crisp and has a faint celery flavor.  The two varieties are Italian flat leaf and curly, pictured here is the Italian flat leaf, it has a stronger flavor.  Curly parsley is most often used for a garnish.  Flat leaf works well in soups, stock, cream and tomato sauces, salads, dressings, in pesto; as well as with poultry, meat, fish, shellfish, dried beans, and vegetables.  My favorite recipe to use Italian parsley in is Lasagne.

Basil has a sweet clovelike taste.  The varieties include sweet basil, small-leaved bush basil, lemon basil, and opal basil, which has a gingerlike taste.  Fresh leaves are best torn and cut then pounded to release the flavor.  The leaves on the top of the plant are the sweetest.  It is an essential herb for Italian cooking, most often used in eggs, tomatoes, pasta, chicken, fish, and shellfish.  This basil just came out of a 4-inch pot and will reach a height of over two feet in my garden this year.  One of my favorite recipes to use basil in is Spaghetti with a tomato and fresh basil sauce.

Mint is refreshing and cool to taste.  The peppermint plant produces the oil they use in candy and gum.  There are more than 30 varieties of mint, best known is the peppermint and spearmint.  Lemon, orange, and apple mint have distinctive fruit tastes.  Used in yogurt, salads, peas, beans, corn, and potatoes; also in jellies, fruit salads, desserts, and in iced tea.  My favorite way to use mint is as a garnish with fruit or tea like I did here. 

Dill has a delicate caraway taste.  Dill should be fresh and just added before serving.  It is used for pickles, eggs, fresh cheeses, yogurt, seafood, chicken, cucumber, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and beets.  Two of my favorite recipes for using dill are Chicken Noodle Soup and  Pecan Chicken Salad.

Sage has a powerful flavor, it is musky and slightly mentholated in flavor.  It aids in digestion when mixed with fatty foods.  Most know for it's use in poultry stuffing at the Thanksgiving table.  It is also good in chicken, duck, goose, pork, sausages, cheese, eggplant, and dried beans, soups, and stews.  I use this in my meatloaf and, I  have used it in Herbs de Provence.

Okay, if you were counting that was seven, but I can't really quit talking about herbs so, I will show you one flower that is considered an herb that you can cook with.  Lavender, can also be used; as I did here, in this recipe for herbs de Provence .  Or, if you grow enough you can fill sachets with them like here.  Herbs cost about $3 per 4-inch pot and many of them are perennial and will come back year after year.  They are also very hardy and easy to grow, that makes having a few fresh herbs around an easy way to cook fresh for summer.

Now I would like to highlight some of the posts that caught my eye last week at Home Sweet Home.

Gayle at Behind the Gate had a fantastic post for Mother's Day called Mothering Love.

Lynn at Shabby Story showed off a lacy potting table!  Do we need to say more!  Gorgeous!

Courtney at French Country Cottage showed off her lilacs in her bicycle basket.  Too beautiful for words!

Mary Ann at Classic Casual Home showed off her spring to summer look in her living room.  Loved it! 

Thank you to all who join me at Home Sweet Home!   It is wonderful to have you here!  There were a lot of great posts last week, makes it hard to pick a few.

Sherry

I will join these ladies today:
Vintage Inspiration Friday at Common Ground 

Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage

Show and Tell Friday at My Romantic Home

Home and Garden Thursday  at A Delightsome Life 
Creative Things Thursday  at The Vintage Farmhouse
Cottage Garden Party  at Fishtail Cottage
Say G'day Saturday  at Natasha in Oz

 Guidelines for Home Sweet Home Party:

Attention: To link up with inlinkz you must have a permalink back to this party in your post or they will not allow you to link.  

Link up anything in your home or garden.  I love seeing neat shops too!

My button is on my sidebar for the party, if you want to use it.   If you are new here I hope you will become a follower. Please don't link up more than two posts.  No Etsy link ups or direct advertising, please.  Please visit some of the other blogs and get some great inspiration.  Thanks.:)

Now let's see your beautiful homes!