♥ Some people believe the path to the heart is through good food – so get busy cooking with your favourite herbs!

♥ Make a special bouquet of herbs and flowers to convey a love message (Red Rose = passion, Rosemary = faithfulness, White Daisy = untainted love, Apple blossom = fruitfulness etc)

♥ What about an aphrodisiac aromatherapy massage blend? (Ylang-ylang, Rose Otto and Sandalwood are often favoured)

♥ Share a ‘love potion’ herbal tea blend (choose your favourite black or rooibos tea and infuse it with a selection of herbs and spices – you can include spices such as cinnamon and ginger, flowers such as chamomile, lavender, rose and marigold and other herbs such as liquorice or ginseng and a bit of mint always does wonders!)

♥ Indulge in a bit of green magic – make a love charm with herbs (old favourites include bay leaves, yarrow stalks, orange blossoms and rosemary)

Have fun!

With my basil (okay… Rick’s basil ) growing so beautifully, I was inspired to make some savory muffins featuring fresh basil – thought up this recipe from my basic muffin mix recipe and it worked very nicely.

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients

• 2 cups Flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda (Bicarbonate of Soda)
• 1 tbsp sugar (optional)
• 1 tsp salt

Wet ingredients:

• 1 cup milk,
• 2 eggs
• +/- 50ml of the oily vinaigrette from the sundried tomatoes

To fold in:

• 1/4 cup sundried tomatoes (in vinaigrette)
• 1/4 cup crumbly feta cheese
• handful of basil leaves (to taste)

Method:

1. Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and work through with a fork till well mixed
2. Combine wet ingredients in a separate jug and mix well
3. Add the wet to dry and mix till just combined (don’t overmix)
4. Fold in the sundried tomatoes, feta and basil
5. Scoop a 1/4 cup mixture in a lined muffin tin
6. Bake for 20 mins in 180C oven (turning pan halfway through to ensure an even bake)

Happy Herbing!
Minette

As a treat for myself and my two little girls I decided to make some bath bombs today. In celebration of the herb of the year 2012, and because it is so gentle on my little one’s skins and beautifully florally, I decided to make them with Rose essential oil and rose petals. They really came out beautiful and I cannot wait to see them fizz all their good stuff into the bath this evening!

Here’s how I did it:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda)
• 1/2 cup Citric Acid
• 1/2 cup Cornflour
• 1/4 cup Epsom salts
• 2 3/4 tablespoon base oil (I used Grapeseed, but Almond or Avocado or any other would be good too)
• 3/4 tablespoon water
• 65 drops of Rose Essential Oil
• Colouring (use cosmetic grade) optional
• Rose petals (washed, dried and pesticide free) optional

Loosely fill a jar with fresh rose petals which have been rinsed and patted dry. Add enough clear honey to cover the petals and leave in a warm place for at least one week. Strain the honey and take a sip as required to soothe sore throats and mouths.

- folk remedy

• 2 egg whites, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup loosely packed red rose petals, rinsed and patted dry
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 4 teaspoons rose syrup
• 1/3 cup half-and-half
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• candied rose petals, for garnish

Instructions

1. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Set aside.
2. In a small saucepan, combine the water and rose petals. Bring to a rolling boil. Remove from heat, and let steep, covered, for 10 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove and discard rose petals.
3. Add the sugar and rose syrup, and return to boil for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Immediately pour the boiling mixture in a slow stream into the egg whites, beating continuously.
5. Add the half-and-half and lemon
   juice, and beat the mixture for 1 minute.
6. Freeze in an ice cream maker, or in freezer (with regular stirrings).

Recipe from Edible Flowers: A Kitchen Companion with Recipes by Kitty Morse

A champion in my garden, indeed the King of Herbs, is the Sweet Basil – giving large full-flavoured leaves in abundance. Some have started flowering so I must remember to pinch off the tops of those plants that I do not wish to go to seed and die off just yet. I normally let at least a third of my basil crop go to seed though so that I am ensured of some new plants next season. Being a summer annual, I know the sweet basil won’t last forever, so I am enjoying it fresh in almost every meal!

Another herb that I have noticed is looking lovely at the moment is my Bee Balm (Bergamot). A few have even started to flower and their raggedy-head bright flowers are too beautiful -and as their name suggests, very much loved by the bees. I cannot believe that they have even ousted my lemon balm from its favourite spot this year!

As I said, the Mediterranean’s are suffering a bit with all this wet, even with the super-duper-drainage that I have provided for them – in particular my Purple Sage and Golden Sage are looking like they might not make it. But then, sage is the one that I just cannot seem to get growing, so no surprise there! Although the thyme, oregano and savory are not doing too bad, they were much more prolific last year this time and it might be time for me to mix things up a bit and move them around before the next growing season.

A lovely little surprise is that the Tuscan Blue Rosemary is flowering again, so I foresee some delicious rosemary flower omelettes in the near future – yummy!

Of my salad herbs I don’t even want to talk – but that is simply because I thought that having a rabbit in my herb garden, as a pet, would be a good idea… Well, there was SO MUCH plants, I never thought that dear little grey-brown Bella would be such a force of destruction! Alas, I’ve learnt my lesson and she is strictly cage-bound unless I am around to shoo her away from where she’s not supposed to be!

I’m not doing much to the garden now, just keeping neat and clean – trimming off some dead leaves and twigs where applicable, picking off flowers heads and continuing with my natural pest management practices and fertilising. Harvesting time is almost upon us, so I’m not disturbing the status quo at the moment, just encouraging healthy and happy growth.

One of the plants that are just reaching and breaching, is my dark opal basils which I’ve planted as companions around my tomatoes. So, walking about my little garden this afternoon, I realised that it was time to deadhead the basils.

(>>> deadhead <<< to pinch the growing top off a herb plant to stop them from flowering and going to seed – which you don’t want your annuals to be doing too soon – and to encourage sideways growth or bushiness).

I had no meals planned with fresh basil (although I think that using the purple basil in the tomato risotto I make could be interesting). I was also not in the mood to make pesto, but I had to use the beautiful heads of purple basil I had at the end of my deadheading mission. And then inspiration struck – I remembered the lovely Tuscan Pink Vinaigrette I made a few years ago. Perfect!

Herbal vinegars and vinaigrettes always look and taste so fantastic and they are so easy to make – here’s a How To on my Pink Tuscan Herbal Vinaigrette.

For the pink basil flavoured vinegar
What you need

• clear sealable glass jar, cleaned well
• white GRAPE vinegar, or white BALSAMIC vinegar, please don’t use spirit vinegar
• bamboo skewer

How to make it

• fill the glass jar almost to the top with the vinegar
• feed the rinsed basil leaves onto your skewer
• pop the skewer with herbs into the vinegar and top of the bottle with more vinegar  Make sure the herbs are submerged in the vinegar.
• let stand in a cool and sunny spot, but not in direct sunlight – you’ll see the vinegar turn pinkish within a few hours and the full colour and flavour will develop over a week or so

You can, if you want a bolder colour and flavour, strain the leaves and add new ones and let it rest for another week.

When you are happy with your pink vinegar, you can move on to making the Tuscan vinaigrette.

For the Tuscan vinaigrette
What you need

• bottle for your end product
• your pink vinegar from above
• extra virgin olive oil
• selection of Italian Herbs (I used Oregano & Garlic, some salad onions)
• salt & freshly ground pepper

How to make it

• add your chopped oregano, garlic and salad onions, salt and pepper to the pink vinegar and let stand for a few days to infuse
• strain the herbs and decant the vinegar into your final bottle to fill it up to a third
• add a few sprigs of whole herbs and a few slices of salad onions to the vinegar – this is more for look, so choose unblemished leaves
• fill the bottle with Olive Oil
• serve & enjoy!

>>> vinaigrette<<< A salad dressing (also used as a marinade sometimes) made by mixing oil and vinegar and often flavoured with herbs and spices.

I’ve been bathing her in a mixture of Lavender pure essential oil and Rose pure essential oil with a splash of Almond oil and then rubbing her down with my own home-macerated Calendula oil and it all helped, but nothing seemed to work as a longer term solution (each night, come bath time, her skin was very dry and rough and itchy again).

I am quite excited tonight though as it is the first night in a long time that I put her pyjamas on over a soft (at least much softer than normal) skin and it seems to be all because of a big bulbine (Bulbinella frutescens) rub down I gave her earlier today. I am going to continue with the bulbine for at least another week and see what results I get. At the very least, I know it is not at all harmful to her little skin and even if it does not help with the eczema and dry skin, it can only be good for her.

I simply press the gel out of the freshly picked bulbine leaves and rub it straight onto her skin, even better sometimes I get it right to split open a leaf and facing it down (gel side to the skin), use it as a rub on the affected parts.

Echinacea, or purple coneflower, can be taken as a herb tea, but it is particularly the tincture that is preferred as an immune tonic.

A tincture is a traditional way of extracting the therapeutic constituents of a plant using alcohol and water.

To make your own echinacea tincture you would need:

• a wide-necked clear jar
• echinacea root (or a combination of root and herb)
• 80 proof alcohol (vodka is a good choice)
• distilled water
• sieve/muslin
• a dark glass bottle (with dropper lid if you have)

If you have harvested your own herbs, make sure they are clean from debris.

• Pack your jar 1/5 (one fifth) full of herb
• Add alcohol to the jar to fully cover the herb*
• Leave the jar to steep for at least 2 weeks, gently shaking the bottle every now and then.
• Strain the mixture through a fine sieve, or for clearer results, muslin or cheesecloth. Discard the herbs.
• Decant the resulting liquid, your tincture, into a dark glass bottle. Keep out of direct sunlight

* You can make a alcohol-water mix of 1 part water to 5 parts alcohol if you wish. The idea around using this mixture is that those constituents that are not solvent in alcohol will be solvent in the water.

Echinacea tincture can be taken during times of high-risk of infection and at the onset of cold/flu symptoms.

NOTES:

• It is not advisable to take Echinacea if you are allergic to plants in the Asteraceae family, such as marigolds, daisies and chrysanthemums.
• If you suffer from auto-immune disorders, do not take Echinacea without consulting with your medical specialist.