You can check out the Lemon Verbena Lady at her blog  http://lemonverbenalady.blogspot.com.

When you think of Thanksgiving, I hope you think of all the good food, your family and your friends. (And maybe a little sage in the stuffing of your turkey.) One thing you don't tend to think of is Peru. About 26 years ago my adoptive mother was in the hospital so my friend and her husband invited me to their Thanksgiving dinner party in Peru. (That is how I met The Herbal Husband!)

Of course, Thanksgiving is not a traditionally Peruvian holiday, but The Herbal Husband loves to eat well! He also never passes up an invitation for good food! I do not remember exactly what the menu was we had to eat that fateful Thanksgiving, but I do remember that our hosts served wild rice. (They vacationed every summer in Minnesota and a capon.) Neither The Herbal Husband nor I have much family in our immediate area, so we usually are on our own for the holidays. Even if we are invited to a friend's house or we are out of town, we always have to have Thanksgiving dinner of own. Love those leftovers! We just cook a turkey breast since most of the time it is just the two of us, but I think as long as you aren't stuffing the bird, you can do this with a whole bird as well.  If you have to have stuffing, you could make a compound butter and place it under the skin of the bird for maximum flavor. I have included an herbal butter recipe below. This is the way we have found the turkey is the most moist and tender.

Defrost your turkey in the refrigerator as recommended in the instructions. I rinse the turkey in cold water and pat it dry. Make sure you take out any turkey parts and plastic bags from the interior. That has gotten me in trouble in the past! With the turkey breast you usually do not have to worry about that. Here is the recipe we have used for several years now.

A fall sage wreath at Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens.

Recipe for a Great Turkey:

• Roasting pan
• Stick of butter
• Can of cola
• 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce, or more if you like it sweeter
• Salt, pepper and garlic powder
• Turkey breast
• Small lemon
• Small onion
• Full hand of sage, thyme, chives, oregano and rosemary

1. Set oven at 325 degrees.

2. Leave cover on the roasting pan for most of time.

3. Mix butter, cola and hoisin sauce, which you can find this in the Asian section of your supermarket, for basting in a 4 cup measuring cup.

4. Baste every 15 minutes until done.

5. Use salt, pepper and garlic powder on top of the turkey breast.

7. Place a small lemon, cut in half or quarters and a small onion in quarters, a hand full of sage, thyme, chives, oregano and rosemary inside the cavity. You may have to juggle the lemon and onion parts around to hold in the herbs. Again, you could make a compound butter with the herbs, lemon zest and butter and place it under the skin and then stuff your turkey as you usually would do.

8. We cook a 6 1/2 pound breast (unstuffed with stuffing) for 4 hours and it was perfectly moist. It may be more time than you think is necessary, but The Herbal Husband likes his meat and poultry well done!

Here is a recipe for an herbal butter I especially like:

Herbal Butter

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter or margarine, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons fresh herbs, chopped (your choice)
• 1 clove of garlic, pressed

1. Finely chop herbs and mix into softened butter, add other ingredients.  Put in a covered container.  Refrigerate for 24 hours before using.

2. Herb butter may be kept refrigerated for two weeks or frozen for up to six months.  Put butter on vegetables, pasta, fish, meat, poultry, bread, etc.

Courtesy of  Pete Louquet, Tom Hamlin and Don Haynie, Spring and Summer Herbal Sampler, Raphine, VA:  Mid Valley Press, 1993, page 10.

You can easily double this recipe if you need more butter or butter spread and who doesn't especially at the holidays!

The picture at the beginning of this posting is not my handiwork, but a wreath from the Fall Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens several years ago.  Life in the Gardens:  Frabel Glass at Phipps is on now for those readers in the Pittsburgh area.  A very enjoyable day for your family over the Thanksgiving holidays.  Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends from Lemon Verbena Lady and The Herbal Husband!

You can check out the Lemon Verbena Lady at her blog  http://lemonverbenalady.blogspot.com.

Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans) is one of my favorite herbs. It needs to be used fresh though. When dried, it loses its flavor. I also love pineapple sage because it is definitely a wonderful fall blooming addition to your herb garden. The hummingbird loves it as well. I have not seen the hummingbird as consistently in the garden as last year. I think the cool summer has kept them from visiting as much.

A blooming pineapple sage plant.

Then came the true test—the Herbal Husband. I tested all three versions on him. We tried the jelly on an unsalted saltine with cream cheese. It doesn't sound good, but it gives you a very clear taste of the jelly. We decided that the rice wine vinegar and lemon juice jellies were best, followed by the white wine vinegar variation. They were so close in flavor though that any of the three were delicious!

Taste testing with pineapple sage jelly, cream cheese and unsalted saltines

Lemon Verbena Lady's Pineapple Sage Jelly

• One 12-ounce can of Old Orchard Pineapple Juice, frozen concentrate, reconstituted with 3 cans of water (It makes three recipes of jelly once it is reconstituted.)
• 2 cups of pineapple juice
• 1 1/2 cups of pineapple sage leaves, packed
• 3 1/2 cups of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar, white wine vinegar OR lemon juice, your choice of one
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 pouch of liquid pectin

1. Wash and dry the pineapple sage in paper towels, then coarsely chop it. Put the pineapple sage in a large saucepan, and crush the leaves using the bottom of a glass. (I use a food processor.) Add the juice, bring slowly to a boil, and boil for 10 seconds. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover, and let sit for 15 minutes to steep.

2. Strain 1 1/2 cups of liquid from the saucepan and pour through a fine strainer into another saucepan. Add the vinegar of your choice (or lemon juice), salt and sugar, and bring to a hard boil while stirring. When the boil can't be stirred down, add the pectin. Return to a hard boil that can't be stirred down and boil for exactly 1 minute, then remove saucepan from heat.

3. Skim off the foam and pour the hot jelly into four hot, sterilized (in boiling water for 10 minutes) half-pint jelly jars. Leave 1/2-inch (or less) headspace and seal at once with sterilized 2-piece lids. I just leave my lids in hot water not boiling until you need them. Can the jars in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.

4. To use: I would use this jelly on thumbprint cookies, cream cheese and crackers for a quick appetizer and a teaspoon or two as a glaze for the last 15 minutes of baking chicken or pork.

Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it's a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blogMy garden blog  at http://patsybell.blogspot.com/ and read her travel writings at http://www.examiner.com/x-1948-Ozarks-Travel-Examiner. 

Every day is a gamble in October. I begin checking the evening temperature to see if the basil will survive another night. The least hint of frost will kill a basil plant. Before we go into mourning over the loss of our favorite fresh herb, consider these five ways to stretch out your harvest.

Basil is best used fresh. If you can’t use all the basil before the first frost, consider these ways to preserve the harvest. When they predict the first frost, madly run out and bring in as much basil as you can carry.

Cross pollinated basil in the Rodale Gardens, Kutztown, Pennsyvannia

1. Fresh Basil: Cut off branches or stems of the basil plant and put them in a vase or jar. Pinch off leaves to use fresh. You might have fresh basil for weeks past the first frost. Basil stems easily root in water. I have a big bouquet of the different kinds of basil in my garden.

2. Basil Vinegar: Splurge on a good white wine vinegar. Fill a jar with basil leaves. Cover the basil with warmed vinegar. Gently shake or press the air bubbles out of the basil and vinegar. Cover and let the vinegar steep for a week. Taste the vinegar, if you would like a more pronounced basil flavor, let it steep for another week. Using a kitchen strainer colander, stain the basil vinegar. Remove and discard the basil leaves. Strain vinegar again through a paper coffee filter or cheese cloth. Label the bottle. It’s ok to add a little water if the vinegar is too strong for your taste.

3. Basil Cubes: Chop up the leaves into small pieces and place in a plastic ice cube tray. Cover leaves with water and freeze. When frozen, store the basil ice cubes in a heavy plastic freezer bag. Drop a frozen cube, directly into any simmering sauce or soup.

4. Basil Butter: Add 3 or 4 leaves of chopped basil to a softened stick of butter, then roll into a log wrap plastic wrap or waxed paper and freeze.

Fresh coarsely chopped basil for basil butter.
Add a slice of basil butter to vegetables or rice.

5. Pesto: The Herb Companion has printed many recipes for pesto. Basically, only three ingredients are needed to make pesto: basil, pine nuts and olive oil. I freeze pesto in a plastic ice cube tray. When frozen, pop the cubes out and put into a heavy duty freezer bag. Skip the cheese in the recipe if you are freezing the pesto. Add fresh grated cheese when you use the pesto.

Here is a good pesto recipe from the September 1996 Herb Companion article "A Basil Harvest," Italian-Style Pesto

Here is another basil recipe from fellow blogger, the Lemon Verbena Lady: Basil Jelly Recipe.

Mixed variety of fresh basil rescued before the big chill. In about two
weeks the stems will root in tap water.
Photo by Lara Ferroni

I will miss fresh basil. If you see me moping around the garden centers, don’t go overboard. A simple “I’m sorry for you loss.” will do.

Later, when the basil recipe making frenzy subsides, we will talk about starting basil indoors from seed. I use an AeroGarden.

You can check out the Lemon Verbena Lady at her blog  http://lemonverbenalady.blogspot.com.

We love to grow our own garlic. The taste is so much better than from the grocery store. 

Here is a variety called 'Romanian Red'. 

It is a long storing porcelain hardneck garlic. It has a hot and pungent flavor with a considerable bite. I never knew there were so many different types of garlic until I attended  the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, New York several years ago. It was just this past weekend, but plan on going next year if you are in the area. It is the last full weekend of September.

I am always looking for ways to use my rosemary plants before the cold weather comes since rosemary is not hardy for us. The comments from my last posting encouraged me to give you other herbal jelly recipes especially ones with rosemary. Since I do not drink alcohol, I like to make jelly with it. I have a pet peeve though when I am making jelly. If the proportions are not exact, you get an extra 4 oz. jar when you are not expecting it!  I have found that 1 1/2 cups of liquid and 3 1/2 cups of sugar makes four 8-ounce jars of jelly. If you have more of either liquid or sugar, you get that extra jar. So I have changed CERTO's recipe for Herbed Garlic Jelly and made it my own by combining a couple of different recipes. My notes are contained in the recipe.

Rosemary Garlic Jelly
Makes 4 to 8 ounce jars

• Water
• 1 1/4 cups dry white wine (I use Pinot Grigio)
• 1/4 cup minced garlic (I use a whole head, maybe more)
• 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 3 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon butter or margarine
• 1 pouch CERTO Fruit Pectin

1. Wash jars and screw bands in hot soapy water. Pour boiling water over flat lids in saucepan off the heat. Let stand in hot water until ready to use. Boil jars in water for 10 minutes. Let stand in hot water until ready to use.

2. Mix wine, garlic, vinegar and rosemary in 3 or 4 quart saucepot. Stir in sugar. Add butter or margarine to reduce foaming. Bring mixture to full rolling boil, reduce heat to a simmer and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes. (This helps suspend the rosemary and garlic in the mixture.) Bring mixture to full rolling boil that can't be stirred down. Take saucepot off the burner and add package of Certo quickly. Return to boil and boil exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. If there is foam and there should not be much, it should disappear when stirred before placing in jars. If there is a lot of foam, skim it with a spoon.

3. Ladle immediately into prepared jars, filling to within 1/8 inch of tops. Wipe jar rims and threads. Cover with 2-piece lids. Screw bands tightly. Place jars in pot or canner and make sure that water covers jars by 1 to 2 inches. Cover; bring water to gentle boil. Process the jars for 5 minutes. Remove jars and place upright on towel to cool completely. After jars cool, check seals by pressing middle of lid with finger. (If lid springs back, lid is not sealed and refrigeration is necessary.)

4. Use it over a block of cream cheese with crackers or put a teaspoon or two on a piece of boneless, skinless chicken or pork in the last 15 minutes of baking.

This is a great addition to your upcoming Halloween party. I have one more jelly recipe with rosemary in it, but I am tinkering with it. The cold weather is coming so I will be out harvesting the pineapple sage and rose geranium leaves next week for the additional jelly recipes I am making this year. More jelly recipes to share! Please stay tuned!

Fall has finally descended on the Northern Hemisphere. Not only have temperatures cooled, leaves changed color and daylight hours shortened, but last Tuesday marked the autumnal equinox. Although it’s not true that the day and night were exactly equal in length, the sun did rise due east and set due west.

Although you can’t actually witness this phenomenon, you can still celebrate its significance. Around the world, festivities honoring the onset of winter are held this time of year to reap the rewards of hard-earned harvests. 

Photo by Rubber Slippers in Italy/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubber_slippers_in_italy/

In East Asia, the Chinese bake moon cakes made from lotus and sesame seeds as part of a 3,000-year old tradition called the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival. The ritual of eating moon cakes symbolizes, among other things, greeting cooler weather and celebrating the end of the harvest season. If you’d like to celebrate the autumnal equinox moon cake-style, try your hand at this impressive moon cake recipe. The recipe mixes ingredients, which include lotus seed paste and finely chopped walnuts, to create the traditional delicacy.

Photo by focus on aperture/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdzl/ 

Before the industrial era shifted us away from farming and seasonal work, the fall season was itself referred to as “harvest” in England. And around the time of the autumnal equinox in Western Europe, harvest home festivals featured feasts of wheat, corn and seeds. This recipe for Rosetta Clarkson's Gingerbread with Coriander Seeds is a delicious example of harvest feasting. It mixes coriander, ginger and cinnamon to create a tasty dessert.

In ancient Greece, Oschophoria was a celebration devoted to the grape harvest, but if you’re not up for Dionysian drinking, try this recipe for harvest grape cake instead.

Photo by JimmyY2K/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmy2k/ 

Also, make sure to check out more great harvest recipes from Kris Wetherbee’s latest article, 10 Thanksgiving Day Recipes. 

Did you do anything special for the autumnal equinox or do you have any favorite harvest recipes? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Like many herb lovers out there, I’ve started drying my herbs so I can enjoy summer flavors during cold months to come. I’m crazy about one her in particular: basil. I can only pick so many basil leaves to dry before I give up and take a few to the cutting board to cook with. The smell of freshly picked basil always reminds me of cooking in Italy.

This is where my roommate and I would buy all of our mushrooms in Florence during my study abroad program in Florence, Italy.

One of my favorite recipes I learned while living in Florence, Italy is for Stuffed Mushroom Caps. My roommate and I would always buy too many mushrooms at the fresh market so we decided to come up with this recipe. It used all of our favorite ingredients: basil, garlic and of course mushrooms! Some nights we would substitute mushroom caps for cherry tomatoes and adapt the recipe to include Italian sausage.

Stuffed Mushroom Caps

Makes 26 to 28 servings

• 26-28 white mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons basil, chopped
• 1½ tablespoons Italian parsley, chopped
• 1½ to 2 garlic cloves
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (other substitutes include Romano or Asiago cheese)
• ½ cup dried breadcrumbs (preferably Italian-style)
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil (an additional tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil will be used to drizzle the baking sheet with)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. While the oven preheats, stem all of the mushrooms.

2. Chop the basil cloves and Italian parsley and peal and mince the garlic cloves. Put these herbs in a mixing bowl.

3. Grate the Parmesan cheese and add it to the mixing bowl.

4. Mix in the dried breadcrumbs and the extra-virgin olive oil by stirring the ingredients together with your hands.

5. Stuff the caps with the breadcrumb mixture until there is a slight dome above the mushroom. Place the stuffed mushroom caps on the baking sheet and pop them into the oven for roughly 25 to 30 minutes, or until the breadcrumb mixture is golden brown.   

Do you cook with mushrooms? Share a few of your favorite recipes with us and your recipe could appear online! E-mail snelson@ogdenpubs.com.

Additional mushroom featured recipes:
Stuffed Shiitake 
Baked Polenta with Italian Sausage, Mushrooms and Three Cheeses 
Mushroom Caviar Stuffing 

Additional Italian recipes:
Cooking with KC: Italian Pasta 
Italian-Style Pesto 
Italian Pesto Cheese Torta

Anyone who remotely knows me understands that I am virtually useless in the morning until my first cup of coffee sets in. From the distinct aroma to the amazing taste, I love everything about coffee.

Once a week, I’ll indulge in a latte from my favorite local coffee shop, Kaladi Coffe. One of the greatest things about this coffee house is its ability to tailor a few drinks to the coming season. For the regulars (dare I say “coffee junkies”), these drinks are almost a signal of the end of one season and the beginning of another. Besides the obvious change in temperature and the abundance of leaves crunching under my feet, I always know when fall is coming because of the pumpkin spice lattes.

Photo of PoYang/Courtesy of Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poyang/ 

Although it is technically still summer, my latte is slightly orange and smells just like fall. With the help of a few baristas, we came up with this pumpkin spice mixture.

Pumpkin Spice Latte

• 2 teaspoons nutmeg
• 4 teaspoons ginger
• 2 teaspoons allspice
• 7 teaspoons cinnamon (if you like the mixture sweeter, add another teaspoon of cinnamon)

1. Mix herbal spices together.

2. Sprinkle on your coffee. Enjoy!

Are you a passionate coffee lover? What seasonal drinks to you like? Leave me a comment and let's chat about it!