A practical and hollistic approach to cooking.

Here's where we take good food and make it great - not just in flavour but nutrition as well.

Recipes designed for maximum nutrition, a realistic budget, a busy lifestyle as well as taste.

Learn about your ingredients, their history, manufacture, accompaniments and health benefits.

Many ingredients have distinctive effects on diabetics, pregnant women, cardiac patients and asthmatics. We cover these as well.

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Why do we add herbs to our cooking?
Today we tend to think of herbs as additives to recipes. Many of these recipes have herbs for a very good reason: Before the invention of refrigeration, meat was usually pickled in brine or smoked to preserve it over the winter months. In winter the pastures lay dormant or under a blanket of snow. Hay was cut and stored to feed the best animals over the bleak winter months and all but the best farm animals were slaughtered at the end of summer (Martinmas or Belhane - what we now call Halloween). This was followed by a great feast to use up any produce that could not be stored for the winter. Prime beef was salted or "corned" - hence the Corned Beef we use today. Pork was soaked in brine, then rubbed in salt and hung in the rafters over the fire which slowly smoked the meat into filches of bacon and hams. Fish was cleaned and split flat to be packed between layers of salt until it was dried then hung in the rafters. Small fish, too small to hang were stored in oil in large pottery jars called crocks, after salting.

Many vegetables were also preserved for the bleak winters. Caggage was pickled in brine (saurktaut), onions and small cucumbers in vinegar (gherkins and pickled onions) and other vegetables like cauliflower, carrots and turnips were chopped up and dropped into boiling vinegar, with herbs and stored in pottery jars of oil for winter - we call this anitpasta today.

Fruit was dried (eg figs and grapes) made into wine or like apples, were stored in the dark, to slow ripening.

All of these methods are successful ways of preserving foods and have given rise to many delicacies we eat today (bacon, ham, herrings, pickles, salami, olives, kippers, bakala etc). However in the damp cold middle ages, when homes were not heated like today and nowhere near as dry, often the meat was turning or "off" before spring and the addition of herbs helped add some taste. Even if the meat was good, it had to be boiled to reduce the salt preservative to a level that was palletable. This boiling usually removed any flavour along with the salt. Herbs added some flavour.

Strewing herbs
These were were used along with rushes and or straw as a floor covering throughout Europe from the late medieval to early Renaissance periods (~1000 to 1650 AD). The rushes and straw provided cushioning to the occupants feet, provided warmth in the winter, and helped to absorb excess moisture from rain, sleet, snow, spilt food and beverages. These plant materials were used to cover the floors of houses before carpets were commonly used as a floor covering.

A variety of herbs were often used along with the rushes and straw in order to exploit their aromatic and insect repellent properties. These herbs were called stewing herbs because they were thrown or strewn upon the floors. The occupants of the house as they went about their daily business would cause the herbs to be crushed and thier essential oils to be released into the air. Strewing herbs would be used in all areas of the household including the dinning hall, kitchen, and bedrooms. Today the floors of these ancient dwellings act like a time capsule for archeoligists, giving us a glimpse of what life was like back then.

Here archeologists have excavated next to the wall in a Roman Christian Abbey dining hall in Southwell, Nottinghamshire UK, to get a glimpse of the lifestyle of the early Christian monks. Objects easily dropped became lost and preseved in the rush comered floors.

During the later medieval through to the Renaissance periods rushes were replaced in European churches once a year on what was called rush-bearing Sunday. The old layer of rushes would be cleaned out and a new layer added to help keep the church attendants feet warm and dry. Aromatic herbs such as meadowsweet and, sage would sometimes be strewn along with the rushes.

Herbs and Spices
Most people have a few favourite herbs and spices, that they use repeatedly. There are some great combinations that take your meals to exotic places.

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Do you know know the added health effects herbs and spices have on your food (eg, cinnamon performs similar to insulin)?

Did you know that vanilla is the only edible product from the orchid family?

There are some amazing stories about herbs, their origins and their properties. Not surprising when you realise that many herbs and spices were the forerunners of today's pharmaceuticals. In many countries western pharmaceuticals are used only as a last resort. Here is a Chinese herbalist's shop. Most of the herbs here are used for medicine only.

This is where you will discover the magic mixes of spices that turn food into Chinese, Indonesian or Indian cuisine.

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