Herbs: Cilantro or Coriander

I'd love to make this a huge, informative post that has everything, but frankly, I'm too tired and it would take too long. So, the short and dirty version!

My cilantro, flowering

Name:
Cilantro or Coriander: same thing. Cilantro is more often the leaves, coriander the the seeds, but they are the same plant.

Asparagus Pesto

WOO HOO, CAMERA SUCCESS!!
Time: 10 min
(5 min. prep/ 5 min cook)

Reality TV: what is cooking really like, these days?

I'm still learning to cook with the  foods I have available, and I'm not a natural, which means I don't instinctively understand how to cook something or what flavors will blend well. So when I am trying to create a recipe, or trying to tweak an existing one? The end is not always a pretty sight. I'd say it works out about as often as it fails spectacularly.

But right now, with my extreme food limitations, ruining my food isn't a minor, if frustrating, experience. It hurts to screw up on a recipe these days, because the loss has a lot more of an impact.

Herbs: My Herb Garden

Here's a list of what herbs I'm actually growing, which is, well, pretty much any herb I find and can manage not to kill in gruesome ways. Eventually, I'll try to have a list of foods that have blended well with various herbs, but right now, I'm still starting out in the realm of fresh herbs and food. I tend to throw everything together and see how it all falls out. :-)


Herbs and edible flowers in my herb garden:

How-to: Making Herbal Tea

Growing an herb garden is, IMO, one of the best things you can do for yourself in terms of adding a little flavor to your food and drink that you know is safe and allergen free. An unexpected benefit of having numerous fresh herbs is the ability to make some lovely herbal teas.

Now I'll be honest, I'm an herbal tea newbie. This is just not something I've drunk much of, so I don't have any particular expectations. However, I was surprised at not only how easy it is to make herbal tea, but how many herbs can be used in it, including many herbs typically found in even the smallest herb garden.

I'll mention specific herbs to use at the end of this post, but for right now, here's the basics of herbal tea making.

Citrus-ade

Time: 2-10 min, depending on amount

Ingredients
Fresh citrus - lemons, limes, oranges. Grapefruit might work, but it'd be iffier
Water 
A sweetener of some sort - I've used sugar in the past, when I could have it, but honey, date sugar, rice syrup, coconut sugar, maple syrup or sugar, yacon syrup - they'd all work, with slightly different flavors. Just remember that most of these have processing, which can introduce cc from certain allergens.For the those who haven't found a safe sweetener yet, you might want to try and grow your own stevia. Take the leaves, dry and crumble them up, and they work great! Or steep fresh leaves in hot water, let it cool, and then use that water for this recipe.

Faux Mexican Baked Beans

Time: 1-2 hours (plus overnight soaking time)
(5 min prep/1-2 hours hands-free cooking) (Add 8 hours for soaking, if needed)

Ingredients
1/2-1 pound dried beans - I tried Sangre de Toro beans (yeah, woo hoo, pretentious me), but black beans, kidney beans, or pinto beans would probably do great, too.
1-3 sweet potato
a fat of some kind - lard, oil, whatever you got. Optional, if you really can't have any.
sea salt to taste
seasonings to taste (I used crushed chile peppers, just a bit)