Okay... if no one mentions that horrific title, I think it would be best for everyone (especially me!). It's the sort of thing that you write... and you think it is witty, the first time... and then, the more that you see it... well, the less witty it becomes. Maybe I'm kidding myself! Perhaps it just started at "Dad Joke" quality level and never made it to the stratosphere of Groucho Marx....
Anyway, these days... both my wife and I who are musicians.... find ourselves with a great deal less concerts! Which means that we have a stupid amount of free time... with the occasional interruption of a lesson or two to give over the internet.
This last week has been some pretty decent weather... and I mean that it has been decent, and not just decent for The Netherlands! It's been sunny and really quite nice in our little garden. Which means that it is a great time to get some pre-spring (or are we in spring?) gardening done...
Out of all the herbs that we have, the Thyme has won and overrun most of the space that we had allocated for the herbs... and a nice chunk of pavement as well (overhanging the pavement... not smashing through the concrete!). So, it finally met it's match in faster moving humans equipped with shears and clippers... and was slashed back before it overran the human sleeping quarters (aka, our house... which was still about 2 metres away... but don't underestimate human procrastination!).
In a show of utter humiliation and defeat... and as proof of the victory of animals over plants... we decided to dry the Thyme as a monument to our victory, such that we would eat the fallen bodies of our adversaries over the coming year in various prepared victory feasts... probably mostly as dinner.
This was our first time with drying herbs in the drying machine... we do a lot of fruits, and for herbs, we've normally just cut, bundled and dried them hanging up in our attic (which gives my gaming room a very nice smell!). However, this time... there was just soooooo much Thyme! So, we decided for the faster route of just sticking in the machine for a few hours. Even still, we managed to fill the dehydrator several times...
When they were finally taken out (this is just one set of trays...) I tried just pulling the dried leaves off the stems... it's pretty easy, they just fall out... but a whole heap of twigs also drop in with them... I guess if you were going to be ultra careful and use tweezers you could probably avoid this... but I wasn't in the mood to be doing this for several hours, so I just rubbed them together in my hands!
Obviously, hard twigs in cooking might lead to a final unexpected victory of the dead plants over the foolish humans. There was every chance that they would just soften in the cooking, but I wasn't taking any chances. I used a sieve that we normally use for steaming or draining pasta and shook through the dried mixture.. Most of the leaves would fall through and most of the twigs would stay on top... I would then dump the remainder, and repeat several times. Doing it like this, I would gradually get less twigs... at the cost of losing some leaves.
Still, the final mix was pretty decent. Mostly leaves with a tiny amount of twigs that I could just pull out by hand... and more than enough leaves to put away for future cooking! Thankfully, I did think things through more carefully than normal and so I didn't end up causing a gigantic mess with the dried leaves and the dust from broken leaves/twigs. Although... there was a moment where it was quite nearly a disaster!
So, if I never manage to get back to work as a musician, perhaps I can start up an artisinal herb drying business... I think there must be about 100g in that picture... perhaps it could fetch a rough price of 10,000 euros?
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