Too Much Rosemary
Last year, I ordered a number of herbs so that I could put together my own blend of Italian seasonings. We use Italian seasonings in a wide variety of tasty ways, and I thought I could save a bundle by ordering herbs in bulk and concocting my own blend.
The plan has turned out fine for the most part, but when the orders arrived, I was surprised and amused to find that the one pound of rosemary I thought I had ordered had somehow ballooned into five pounds. It might have had something to do with my firewall preventing cookies from being accepted and therefore the shopping cart not updating and me clicking on 1 pound several times, and then when I did fix the firewall thing, I didn't notice that there was a 5 where there should have been a 1, but how it happened doesn't matter. The fact was, I had bought and paid for five pounds of rosemary, and I have a thrifty soul that doesn't like wasting anything.
Bearing in mind that herbs are light and bulky, and therefore a pound of herbs can be the size of a small cat, you have some idea of how much rosemary five pounds is. Yes, that much.
Fortunately, we like rosemary in this household, so I have been using it with a much bolder hand than I might have, say, were I using it out of those tiny two-ounce bottles you pay $5 for at the grocery store.
As a result, I've been delighted to find that rosemary adds a wonderful flavor to a wide range of dishes that I hadn't used rosemary on before. Of course, I mix my own Italian seasonings blend, which has rosemary in it, in with a nubmer of foods, such as spaghetti sauce. I also mix the Italian seasonings blend in with ground chuck, along with some other seasonings and spices, to make very tasty burgers.
But I have also branched out into using rosemary solo.
- I sprinkle rosemary over chicken pieces, add some lemon juice from the lemons in my garden, and cook the chicken just like that--simple, but delicious.
- I sprinkle rosemary over meat roasts of all sorts.
- I add rosemary to chicken broth, along with some cayenne, for when my daughter is feeling peaked and needs something that won't upset her tummy. (She has recently added the delicious refinement of ground ginger to the soup.)
And so on. Anything that looks savory might get that little sprinkle or rosemary. And so far, no one has grown tired of it. Yet.
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