Monday, July 23, 2012

Herb Harvest

Our herbs are really starting to take off. Basil, in particular, is growing like crazy. It's already starting to shoot out flowers, so I've been picking them off every evening to prevent it from going to seed too early. I really haven't used much basil yet this year because I didn't want to stunt its growth, but I felt comfortable enough to harvest some leaves today for our dinner tonight.


I pinned this recipe weeks ago for ginger tea lemonade with basil, so I gathered up the ingredients and brewed some of this to drink with our meal (I doubled the batch because David drinks a lot of tea).
 
I've also been dying to try this recipe for rosemary and basil focaccia, so I baked up a loaf. I've never baked focaccia before, but this was surprisingly easy and quick to make.


For the main dish of the meal, I went with one of our favorites - 15 minute creamy avocado pasta. No joke, it really only takes 15 minutes. It's one of my go-to meals when I want to make something quick that's filling with lots of flavor.


This meal did not disappoint! So many strong, refreshing flavors and everything went together so well. So happy I was finally able to put some of my basil to good use. Hopefully since I trimmed it back quite a bit, it will come in fuller and still produce for a while longer.


After we ate dinner, I thought it would be fun to share some of our yummy bread with the keets. Thought they'd like a little treat, but they weren't impressed.


They pretty much just fell asleep. The white one did eat a teeny tiny crumb from my hand, but then started to fall asleep standing up. Oh well, I'll just leave the focaccia to the humans.

~Tammy

8 comments:

  1. Such a pretty presentation, and EVERYTHING looks delicious! I'm thinking that creamy avocado pasta is going to have to make its way to my meal plan next week; thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thanks! You should definitely try that pasta. If you like avocado and lemon, you'll love it.

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  2. What a timely post for me. My basil is also starting to get flowers on them. I have never had much success getting the basil to grow leaves large enough for my purposes. While I am waiting, they go to seed. :(

    When I don't have any planted, and have to buy it, it comes packaged with leaves on the stalks. But if I snip a stock from the planter, it does not grow back and I use up my supply.

    Sooooo, my really stupid question to you is, how do you harvest your basil?

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    1. Not a stupid question at all! I actually researched myself before I went cutting up my plant. What I did was just cut some of the stalks off about halfway down. I got some really good advice here - http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/herbs/msg0602323428774.html

      Basically you just don't want to harvest more than 1/3 of the plant at a time and need to let it grow back before harvesting again. You can always just pick off a few leaves if you need a small amount. But since I needed a lot of basil, I just cut back some of the taller stalks.

      I really have to stay on top of picking the flowers and buds off so they don't go to seed. I have to do it every night pretty much!

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    2. Great! I can't wait to try it. I see some bruschetta in my future. :)

      Sonja of
      http://lallybrochfarms.blogspot.com/

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