19-6: Fresh Herbs

19-6: Fresh Herbs

Since it’s summer, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to share my summer garden with you, courtesy of 19-6: Fresh Herbs. This one came from the new book, and is the prequel (of sorts) to 19-7: Fresh and Dried Herbs. I had lamented not being able to easily find fresh tarragon back when I wrote that one–well, now I grow it myself in my own backyard.

Growing my own herbs in my own garden for use in cooking was one of the top reasons I wanted to buy my own place, and the garden situation outside was one of my main factors when selecting a house (back when you could have preferences about things like that and didn’t just have to overpay for whatever was available).

I use my homegrown herbs for cooking all year round, and it’s quite the pleasure to be able to use just the amount needed fresh from my own backyard rather than buy overpriced herbs at the grocery store and then watch them wilt and die in my fridge.


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19-7: Fresh and Dried Herbs

19-7: Fresh and Dried Herbs

19-7: Fresh and Dried Herbs has been a recipe-in-the-making for a few months. I mention frequently that I often write these entries months after I complete the actual recipe, but this one actually took me that long TO complete.

19-7 Fresh and Dried Herbs

Usually, these Cooking School cards don’t have too much in the way of actual recipes–often times it’s more like the card above, more recommendation than actual recipe. I’m not going to restate what they’ve written here–it’s all good advice. Jump behind the cut for some herb blend recipes as well as a DIY vinegar challenge and BONUS limoncello recipe.


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6-20: Rosemary Chicken

6-20: Rosemary Chicken

6-20: Rosemary Chicken is another “Easy” level recipe, my favorite kind of recipe from Simply Delicious. This isn’t my usual method to prepare chicken, but it is fun to try something new every once in a while.  ?

The editors of Simply Delicious are sometimes off on their estimate of cooking time. 45 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to bake a chicken at the temperature they recommend on this card. I found this out the hard way. ?


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10-10: Roast Leg of Lamb

10-10: Roast Leg of Lamb

Due to some infestation-related activity long ago, the Lamb and Veal category suffered some minor liquid damage. Some of the cards are virtually unusable, but this card, 10-10: Roast Leg of Lamb is just slightly mangled.

Despite the condition of the card, this preparation of leg of lamb is one of the best I’ve ever had. ?


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10-12: Basil-Baked Lamb

10-12: Basil-Baked Lamb

I’ve done over 100 recipes at this point (closing in on 150 in the next few weeks), and this is the FIRST recipe from Group 10: Lamb & Veal. This is probably due to the fact that neither of those have ever featured heavily in my diet or culinary rotation. However, in the interest of science everything must be covered. So here we go–the first lamb recipe: 10-12: Basil-Baked Lamb.

Um, yeah. In the very first entry (where I explained what this whole project is about), I had mentioned that these books got a bit trashed when I had a bad roach infestation in my first apartment after college. This section was one of the casualties from overzealous roach spray distribution and poor post-massacre clean-up. A lot of the pages got stuck together, and due to their lack of regular use, stayed that way for far too long. Luckily for this one, the recipe part of the card is still somewhat legible.


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4-21: Herb-Roasted Potatoes

4-21: Herb-Roasted Potatoes

An old favorite that I’d like to share with you today: 4-21: Herb-Roasted Potatoes. ?

4-21 Herb-Roasted Potatoes

These are essentially homemade oven fries, and they’re super easy to do. So easy, in fact, that I used to use these as one of my recipes for when I taught elementary & middle school kids to cook in an after-school program a few years ago. If a kindergartener can do it, you can too.


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