Cooking is a huge part of our family culture. While not everyone in the family cooks, certainly everyone enjoys home-cooked meals – and the ones who don’t help cook, clean up after!
One part of the draw for our family in planting all these wonderful herbs and flowers was to be able to grow our own delicious herbs to cook with. In the summer we have a plethora of fresh options; cilantro, basil, parsley, lovage, thyme, savory, and the list goes on. Nothing quite beats fresh-out-of-the-garden herbs, but our Heavenly Herbal Blend comes pretty close.
I’ve been on quite the soup kick this winter, maybe because it’s been so wintery? Nothing warms you up like a hot bowl of soup. Soups take a bit of time at the beginning, but the overall value for the number meals they provide versus cost is great for the pocketbook, not to mention there are so many healthy options out there!
I thought I’d share a number of recipes where I’ve substituted herbs listed for our own herbal blends – with astounding success. Our herbal blends are salt-free, so you can always choose how salty you’d like your dish to taste.
This eastern European-inspired Cabbage, Sausage and Potato Soup is full of cozy goodness. I actually just made this for lunch today, and I don’t even care for cabbage that much, but I’m so pleasantly surprised at the delicious flavour. I substituted kielbasa for mild Italian sausage – it was on sale at the grocery store, sue me – and the Italian seasoning for Grandma Marcello’s Italian Seasoning. I was also out of celery, but as our herbal blend contains the delicious and peppery/celery flavours from lovage, I didn’t even notice it missing.
I could basically post any soup or stew and tell you to use our herbal blends and I promise you that it would not disappoint. I used Heaven Herbal Blend in a Seafood Chowder on New Years Day in place of parsley for an extra punch of savoury with the cream cheese base and HOLY YUM.
As a teenager I played a lot of basketball and my pregame meal go-to was always pasta with olive oil, garlic salt, oregano, and Parmesan cheese. While I now only let myself indulge every once in a while (because I’ll eat the entire pot, let’s be real), I’ve since updated the recipe and exchanged the oregano for our Herbes de Provence. It just has so many great flavours, it makes a good thing even better. One example of this recipe is Here although I will say they’re much fancier than me, using real garlic and such.
Grandma Noonan’s Maritime Seasoning makes for a wonderful rub on meats. I’ve included a great recipe for Roast Chicken where you can substitute the sage, rosemary and parsley for our blend. I’ll admit to being relatively new at the chicken-roasting game, but it really is remarkably easy – even if you’re lazy like me and just slather everything on the skin instead of under.
Honestly, I use herbs on everything. I’m huge on eggs for breakfast, and it took me a while to get past just adding things like onions and cheese. But eggs are always better with Heavenly Herbal Blend, trust me on this. I put them in my boring store-bought spaghetti sauce to add another element to it. And it’s been a staple in my homemade chicken noodle soup – always made with the carcass after I’ve roasted a chicken!
I hope I’ve given you a little inspiration to try something new. Be brave and go off the recipe, even if it’s your own! Let us know what your favourite home-cooked meal is in the comments below.
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