preserving herbs in salt, some beautiful cloudy days and more river dips!

last week, we had several cloudy and windy days but blue, blue skies and lots of sun in between.

the clouds here are just gorgeous!

all different kinds of clouds that hide the sun and then the sun pops back out.

beautiful!

our bro and sis G and C were down - they are getting ready to move here full time in september - woohoo! they gave us this shelving unit.



it's perfect for out on the porch to put gloves and shoes in.



ahhhh....river days. we love river days and beach days are coming soon. here is our beautiful river.

here is the stone boardwalk that jambaloney made for me to walk out into the river.

we had a super-filling, nutritious kidney bean salad with kalamata olives, green olives, pepperoncini, hearts of palm, artichokes, fresh-crushed garlic, ACV, EVOO and chopped up pickled onions. it was deelish. and filling.

we also had some cherries to snack on. when we are down at the river i like to make things that we can have one or two bites of and then put it back in the cooler, go for a dip, suntan a little, have another few bites, rinse and repeat.

kids - hang on to your seats. here's our first major haul of shelling peas to be frozen for the winter:

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! it's not much, but we eat the peas right off the vine when they first come out and then every 2 days from now until the end of september we go out and pick whatever is ready, have some in a meal and then add the rest to the bag in the freezer. that way we get freshpicked peas all winter long. i don't blanch them, just rinse them and in the bag they go.

here's some more rose petals for teas and salve. and some borage flowers, evening of primrose, st. john's wart and chamomile also for teas and salve. if you pick only a few every single day and let the sun do the drying - you will have teas all winter.

for my healing salves, i like to pick fresh flowers and herbs.

here's a wonderful supper of roasted potatoes, carrots, turnip, garlic cloves and onions with hearts of palm and cherries on the side.

roasted veg are deeeeelishous! i cut up the chunks of veg and dump them in a big bowl with a lid. i add a ton of olive oil, turmeric, cumin and cayenne - yummeh!

and did you know that you can preserve whole herbs in sea salt and they will last at least 6 months in a dark area or up to a year in the fridge?

right now i have dill flowers coming in gangbusters. i have planted more dill, and left some of the dill flowers to go to seed for next year's seed....but what to do with these delicious flower heads when my cucumbers, peppers and zucchini are not yet ready for pickling?

you collect your dill heads (i love dill heads in pickles) and you clean them and dry them off. get a jar and line the bottom with coarse sea salt.

add your dill heads.

cover them with salt.

put them in a dark area until you are ready to use them. if more dill heads appear before you are ready to use them, add another layer of dill heads and cover them with salt. keep doing this until you fill a jar. and then 5 months from now when you get a gorgeous fresh-caught striped bass - swish the salt out of the way and your perfectly preserved dill heads will be as fresh as the day you caught them. you can do this with any herb. imagine making fresh basil in december from basil you grew and salt-bedded at the end of august. the basil leaves will come out as fresh as new.

just be sure to use SEA SALT and be sure to use enough of it! and guess what? that herbed salt is still useable for years to come!

here's some herbed lebanese hamburger rice - be heavy with the turmeric, cumin, cayenne, cardamon, cinnamon, ground coriander and crushed garlic.  

serve it with fresh-picked peas, grated purple haze carrots and make a dressing of EVOO, ACV, garlic, lemon, honey, sea salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, a gorgeous dollop of local honey and a pack ton of mint! and since the borage is now flowering add some beautiful and edible borage flowers. the man (jambaloney) has just finished buidling himself a proper workbench out of junk wood and is pretty proud of himself. he deserved a great supper after all of that work!

tomorrow it might be rainy according to one weather channel, or it might be sunny according to another, or it might be a mix of both, or it might snow - the only reliable method of predicting cape breton weather is using a weather stone. they last a life-time and they always tell you the weather. we sell framboise manor weather stones of different sizes between $20 and $50 dollars but you have to pay the shipping (it costs a lot to mail rocks!).  their basic proven meteorology method is thus - put the weather stone out in your yard where you can see it from a window. if you can see the rock and the sky is blue - it's a sunny day. if you can see the rock, but the rock is wet, it's raining. if you can see the rock but it has some white stuff on it - it's possible that it is snowing or hailing. if you can't see the rock because it's covered in white stuff - you're in a blizzard.

our email addresses are listed on the right side of our blog. if you would like one of these proven cape breton weather stones - just email us. we'll work out the shipping cost for you.

but regardless of what the weather is like tomorrow - i made some delicious lemon balm, mint and honey sun tea.

that's roughly about 2-3 cups of chopped herbs - 3/4 lemon balm and 1/4 mint. pick your leaves and rinse them and then just tear them up and bruise them by hand. a big honking dollop of honey, fill it with delicious berkey-filtered rainwater, leave it in the sun all day giving it a stir every now and again and then put it in the fridge for overnight. tomorrow, we'll be drinking this beautiful infusion all day.

teehee. and i can't help myself. i have to tell you! i made ice-cubes with borage flowers to go into each cup - that's pretty awesome no?

sending much love.