It's all about the herbs

Hi everyone! I know I eluded that I would complete a craft and a new recipe this week but life got in the way and in addition this tip was too awesome not to test out. My mom sent me home with a ton of herbs (and tomatoes, among other things) on my trip to Oregon last weekend. Since we had so much and there is only two of us in the home, I decided we needed to freeze the herbs for later use.

I found this great tip here. Our ice cube trays were already being used so I pulled out my mini muffin tin and it worked just as well. First I chopped up leftover cilantro from the pico de gallo I made; I will show you that recipe a bit later. Then I chopped the lemon basil and pulled the leaves off of the parsely. You do not want the stems.

parsely

cilantro

lemon basil

(this stuff smells wonderful; I could sniff it all day long)

In my muffin tin, I put a tablespoon of cilantro in each section and labled it accordingly with masking tape.

Then I filled other sections with the parsely and labled it as well.

 Then the lemon basil was done the same way.

Then you fill the holes with water until they are covering the herbs and then pop it into the freezer. It's just that simple and now you have portion controlled herbs all year round and you don't have to worry about them getting moldy before you can consume them.

So I promised the recipe for pico de gallo I made with some of the cilantro from above. First rinse your tomatoes and then dice them up bite size. You will want about 1-2 cups of dices tomatoes. I used two different types; red (Romas) and I also used small orange heirlooms.

Then dice up a half of a small onion. You can use white or red; I chose white. This part inevitably makes me cry like a baby. I hate cutting onions but they add amazing flavor to almost any dish so I suck it up. To get my onions really small I use my Pampered Chef chopper. It works beautifully but you can achieve this with a knife as well. First you will want to cut off the end, then make a small cut on the side (to stabilize the onion from rolling on you), then cut diagonally through the onion, then make slices vertically through the onion (opposite of your diagonal cut). Now all you have to do is chop it like you were slicing rings; this will yeild you small pieces.

Now in a bowl I combine my my onion, tomato, three cloves of garlic (diced), 3 tablespoons of lime juice, 2 tablespoons of cilantro (chopped) and salt and pepper to taste. Let them sit in the fridge for a half an hour to marry the flavors and then serve with your choice of chips. If you like your salsa spicy, throw in some jalapeno's as well to kick it up a notch.