Are you a witch in the kitchen?

Popps recently asked me if witches are real.

This started a conversation about history and how sometimes men used to think that girls should not learn to read and write or be allowed to work in jobs that you needed to learn things for.

But sometimes women were very smart, and they taught themselves lots and lots of things, often they learnt about nature, and herbs and because they didn't have panadol and dimetapp they used lots of things from the garden to make people better. The men thought these women were magic and became scared of them and then called them witches, because herbs can do all sorts of things.

And because herbs are so good for us and can still be used for all sorts of things, while Mr H looks after most of our garden and yard I like to take control of the herbs. In a perfect herbalicious world I would have bountiful crops of parsley, mint, coriander, basil, dill, chives and rosemary.

Instead I have chives - which apparently match with roses - so they sit in a pot with a beautiful yellow rose bush. I have mint, but there is something wrong with it, the taste is not right for some reason, it must be some hybrid mint thing that is just a bit wrong. I have thyme growing like a weed, who uses thyme anyway, and what for? The rosemary was planted too close to the sandpit and became a too regular ingredient in sand pit 'cookery'. One time the basil went ok but further attempts to have this in the garden have failed. As for Dill - I am a dill.

But Italian Parsley. LOTS.

I also have silver beet, growing as it usually does, like a weed.

Today I decided to use a stack of the silver beet up and looked up some recipes. I found one that I thought might be ok. One that we might all actually eat. Silver beet soup, cooked up with onions and potatoes and with sour cream stirred though at the end.

It must have actually been a nasty witches brew recipe though, horrible horrible stuff and it is being ripped from the garden tomorrow.

So that left me with a garden of parsley and spring onions.

I chose the parsley. Used this recipe from Veggie Mama and the meal was declared a new favourite. Both girls had two bowls full and have requested the same again tomorrow night, I am declaring this witches magic, because it is so rare for my new dishes to be applauded so loudly.

Tomorrow, I am ripping the entire herb garden out and starting again. Witchy herb tips appreciated!

Are you a witch in your kitchen?



Image from Pinterest.