Herb of the Month: Lemon Balm

Lemon Balm: A Blissful Herb for August

Each month we are focusing on a particular herb, looking at its growing and cooking potential. This month, the honor belongs to lemon balm, also known as melissa officinalis. This member of the mint family is great for inducing and inspiring calm and tranquility.The balm in the herb's name also hints at the health benefits that this plant offers. Lemon balm, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center,  helps to alleviate stress, insomnia, anxiety, and indigestion.

Nicholas Culpeper, the Early Modern author of Complete Herbal and English Physitian (1652), has further suggestions in how to use this herb: he says that it is good for women recovering from childbirth and may be used to disinfect certain skin irritations, among other maladies; not only can lemon balm be steeped as a tea but can also be steeped in wine.

How to Grow Lemon Balm

Pick a nice sunny spot: a large pot or planter box works fine. Either sow the lemon balm from seed or transplant the plants. Water well, as for mint. Once lemon balm is established--give it a couple of weeks--make sure that the herb is watered regularly. Like other members of the mint family, lemon balm will spread if not contained; also, like other members of the mint family, lemon balm is (happily) difficult to kill.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Lemon_balm_2.JPG

How to Use Lemon Balm in Cooking

If you want an uplifting herbal tea, look no further than lemon balm. This light, citrusy flavored herb tastes great infused in a tea; sweeteners are optional. As an alternative, you can add the bruised leaves to a pitcher of ice tea and let it set for several hours before drinking for a refreshing beverage. As the Herb Society of America points out, the leaves are better used fresh than dried.

Lemon balm can also be used to flavor poultry and fish, and it can also be added to salad greens. The possibilities are nearly limitless.

Have you yet tried lemon balm? If not, I highly encourage you to try this herb. Bon appetit!

Preserving Options for Garden Riches: Making Chutneys

Making Chutney: A Taste of the Exotic

If you have a surplus of peaches or other fruit, or of vegetables, and you are wanting to do something different with the extra produce, try making chutney, an Indian condiment that offers a sweet-sour-spicy touch to chicken, pork, venison, or vegetarian dishes.

The word chutney comes from Hindi caṭnī.  This versatile accompaniment will delight the senses and the imagination. In honor of August being Peach Month, I recommend this recipe for peach chutney; you might also try mango chutney, tomato chutney, coconut chutney, zucchini chutney (to help prepare for August 8, which is National Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Porch Day), and cilantro mint chutney, to name but a few possibilities. As an added bonus, chutneys make tantalizing, unique holiday gifts.

By Simon Law from Montréal, QC, Canada (Chutneys) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Quotations about Spices (not many quotations about chutney exist): Food for Thought

“Variety is the spice of life” – American proverb

“Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor. – William Cowper

“Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, Manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man” – William Shakespeare

“I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” – Bible

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.” – Frank Herbert, in Dune

On that note, bon appetit! 

Bread and First Harvest

Bread as Staff of Life and More

This first weekend in August sees the arrival of Lammas, a time of early harvest. This is a time to celebrate the bounty of the season; since bread is widely regarded as the staff of life, this harvest time is also a time to celebrate the act of making and breaking bread.

Making bread is a time-honored process of transformation: the unassuming ingredients of flour, water, yeast or other leavening, sugar, and salt become a rising dough that, with the kiss of the oven's heat (or, as I discovered one summer, the barbecue pit's heat), becomes a wholesome loaf.

Many varieties of bread exist: you can choose, among other options, white or wheat bread, cornbread (my personal preference this time of year), multi-grain bread, even gluten-free bread. Flat breads such as tortillas, pita bread, or lefse bread are among the myriad of possibilities.

"Mixed bread loaves" by Flickr.com user "FotoDawg" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotodawg/111052842/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mixed_bread_loaves.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Mixed_bread_loaves.jpg

Quotes about Bread: Some Inspirational Food for Thought

“All sorrows are less with bread. ” -- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,/A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou/

Beside me singing in the Wilderness -/And Wilderness is Paradise enow.” -- Omar Khayyam

“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.” – Woodrow Wilson

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

“It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.” – Ivan Pavlov

“‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said, ‘is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides are very good indeed.’” - Lewis Carroll

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.” – Robert Browning

“Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.” – Ambrose Bierce

Here's to making and breaking bread with those we love this weekend. Bon appetit!