Using the Stems From My Dried Garden Herbs

a quart of oregano stock

If you grow and dry your own herbs, you may be like me and think that the twiggy/woody stems might be useful for more than just compost additive. 

This past week I harvested more sage and oregano, cutting stems with leaves on. After washing the herbs, I dried them in the dehydrator. Once fully dried, I removed the leaves from the stems and store them in airtight containers. Remaining is a pile of twiggy or woody herb stems. 

Not wanting to waste even one little bit, I made a broth with each batch of herb stems. In one saucepan I placed the stems from the dried oregano and into another saucepan I placed the stems of the dried sage. I added about a quart of water to each pot and brought them to a boil. I simmered the herbs, covered, for about 2 hours, then strained and refrigerated the resulting stocks to use in cooking later during week.

sage stock to use in chicken and dumplings

The oregano stock is very mild and added a nice flavor to an Italian vegetable and lentil soup. The sage stock was more highly flavored. It was used as the liquid in a pot of chicken and dumplings.

Using the stems from my dried herbs helps stretch my winter herb supply. I use a lot of both oregano and sage in winter cooking, often depleting my supply before spring growth begins again. Anything I can do to maximize what I grow is a savings, as it reduces the chance I'll need to buy commercial herbs come April or May. I still compost my herb stems. I just now do that after I make stock with them.

My Week, Early September (plus links to 2 new posts)

(links to 2 new posts near the bottom of the page)

Hi friends! These short weeks go by in a blur, don't they?

This past week, we've swung from so chilly that the furnace kicked in one day early in the week to Thursday, so warm we've got the windows open. We've had drizzle, fog, and sunshine, sometimes even all in the same day. My husband has been using the dry days to complete the painting of the deck railing. While I see these sunshiny moments as opportunities to hang dry the laundry.

Unofficial summer came to an end with the conclusion of the 3-day weekend. How was your Labor Day? Did you cook-out? We had a fire-ring cook-out at our house to celebrate. I made scratch hot dog buns and we each roasted our own hot dogs. I also used garden tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and garlic to make one salad and garden plums, apples, blackberries, and preserved figs (from last year) to make a fruit salad. I also used garden kale in a cheesy kale and mashed potato casserole. 

And I made blackberry cheesecake ice cream for dessert, using foraged blackberries, heavy cream, milk, cream cheese, sugar, yogurt, and vanilla. We enjoyed all of it! 

The Tuesday following the long weekend, I put away all of the patriotic decor and dishes (red, white, and blue stuff). Appropriate to this next season, I pulled out the harvest tablecloth.

Frustrated with the mess of supplement and rx bottles in the cabinet, I made risers one afternoon out of cracker boxes. 

I taped the open end of an empty cracker box closed.

Next, I cut the box in half, lengthwise.

I slid one half inside the other.

Then stacked the now small box on top of a regular box.

Now doesn't that look better? We can actually find what we need now. And, it has stayed this way all week! That's the mark of success with these organizational projects -- it stays organized.

My fall vegetable garden on the deck is humming right along. The lettuce and spinach has been growing slowly, however the kale looks great (above). The kale will continue to grow for another few weeks. When cold weather returns, I'll push the deck planter up against the house to give it some freeze protection, extending its usefulness as much as possible. Beginning in late October through November we'll use the kale in meals. Sometime in mid to late December, the kale will die back and the plants will remain dormant through winter. In mid-March, it will return and give us several weeks of kale to harvest before going to seed.

I continue to freeze blackberries. Every time I think we're done with the blackberry picking, my husband finds more. I open the fridge door and there's another pail full. This is one of two jumbo bags of frozen blackberries. The bags are the size of a standard pillow. This is free food. Good thing we love blackberries!

I worked at making treats and snacks for my family again this week. The cinnamon rolls were a big hit, especially since I made it clear that they could be snacked on whenever and not just saved for breakfast. I also baked a couple of batches of bar cookies and made popcorn on several occasions. Making these snacks meant we used less of the commercial snack foods, like crackers. I've said before, we're a cracker-eating family, here.

New Posts

I got to writing up our grocery spending for the month of August. We spent a fair amount this past month. However, we did stock up quite a bit. You can read about it here in this post. 

Some of our pantry stock-up items were ordered online and shipped to our house. The boxes came packed with brown craft paper. I had quite the mound of crumpled paper in my dining room for the month. I finally got to getting that cleaned up. Now the big question, what can I do with all of this paper? Read about it here, and please add your ideas for how to use this. Yes, I do save and reuse this sort of stuff, just like I save string from commercial bags of beans and rice. No I don't have a ball of string the size of Minnesota in my kitchen drawer. This is the string that I use every summer to tie up tomato plants and in winters to truss whole chickens and turkeys for roasting. You know the drill -- waste no, want not.

And that's about it for the week. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. What's on the agenda for your weekend?