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So, I've been thinking about how I season food, and what works for me.
Alum/Lily Family: Crow garlic, various kinds of chives, onions, garlic, ramps, leeks (apparently asparagus is part of this family? Which seems odd, but I'll go with it)
Mustard Family: both in the sense of wild & cultivated pot veggies (garlic mustard vs kale vs radish greens vs red cabbage - which are less about seasoning but are still part of the palate) and in the sense of hot mustard, honey mustard, grainy mustard, and (potentially) horseradish.
Booze: In my case, this means wine/cider (including my fermentation failures that work as something closer to vinegar). But it also includes beer, port, whiskey, and potentially sherry. Also also other ferments (which is technically everything from sour kraut - also part of the mustard flavour profile - to vinegar and kombucha which are acetic acid ferments to, technically, cheese... see below).
Animal Stuff, Part 1: Milk, cream, yoghurt, salted butter, various cheeses (ANY cheeses) but, in particular, chevre, parmesan, and cheap cheddar (and occasionally a brie or a blue). Sometimes there's also kefir or cream cheese involved.
Animal Stuff, Part 2: Bone stock, bacon grease, duck fat, schmaltz, poorly home-rendered lard, a couple of tablespoons of diced cured sausage.
Mint Family: This is a LOT of aromatic herbs - everything from actual peppermint/apple mint/spearmint to culinary sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, savoury, and basil, to nettles (which are more like a pot vegetable), to lavender, bergamot, and anise hyssop, to a whole BUNCH of other, more medicinal stuff (like mugwort and skullcap).
Fruit: Rhubarb, apples, and cranberries, for the most part. Sometimes red currants. Sometimes other berries (service berries, raspberries, rather less frequently rosehips and sumac), sometimes other fruits (pears, apricots, nectarines, plums/prunes and, sometimes, imported citrus). But mostly those are my top three. (NOTE: Almost all of these are members of the rose family. The citrus isn't, the sumac[1], rhubarb, and cranberries[2] aren't. But everything else is).
~*~
Other plants we eat (veggies now, rather than seasonings):
Celeriac, cilantro, lovage, dill, and carrots (and, to a lesser extent, parsnips, chamomile, parsley, and fennel) are all part of the umbel family. These - particularly the lovage, dill, and cilantro, play a bigger part in my summer cooking (unless you count the dill seed I chuck in with my pickles), but I still tend to think of this family more as a "pot-veggies" family than as a "herbs" family, especially since lovage can get huge and basically be a hardy perennial substitute for celery...
Spinach, swiss/rainbow/ruby chard, sorrel, rhubarb (see above), amaranth, beets, buckwheat, quinoa, and lambsquarters are all part of the spinach/amaranth (goosefoot/knotweed) family. Sorrel and rhubarb notwithstanding, this is a veggies (rather than seasonings) family, but one that plays a pretty big role in my cooking.
Squash Family: Various pumpkins, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, zucchini and other summer squash, baby hubbard, delicata, sweet dumpling, buttercup, and whatever else I can swing, plus cucumbers and occasionally melons. The zucchini and the pumpkins get sliced/diced, steamed/baked, and frozen. The cukes get eaten in salads or else pickled. The winter squashes get eaten in a triaged manner. They're definitely part of the flavour profile, but they're not what I'd call a seasoning.
Nightshades like various tomatoes, bell peppers, thai chilies, jalapeno peppers, eggplants, potatoes, and ground cherries... they're hella flavourful (okay, MOSTLY hella flavourful. Less-so the eggplants and potatoes), but they play less of a role in my day-to-day cooking/seasoning than they do in other households.
I mostly ignore the aster family. Other than the dandelions, I mean. Tarragon in lovely, but we don't get a lot of it and I don't tend to miss it the way I would horribly miss hot mustard or garlic or white wine in my cooking.
Grass Family: Wheat and barley, a little bit of rye flour when I'm making sourdough bread, oats (sometimes as whole groats, more often as rolled oats or oat flour) occasionally make an appearance, rice comes in and out. But mostly the grains we stick with are wheat (flour) and barley (pot and pearl).
Pea/Pulse Family: red lentils, green lentils (which I sprout), mung beans (which I sprout), chick peas, romano beans, great northern beans, various kidney beans, black beans... and also cranberry beans, edamame, snow peas, sugar peas, various green snap beans, scarlet runner beans, and lima beans. We eat them, but I rarely (successfully) grow them, and they're not exactly flavourful. Though red lentils are peppery as heck, who'd have thought. O.O
Anyway. This has been my thinky-thoughts for the evening.
TTFN,
Amazon.
[1] Part of the Cashew family - much to my surprise - right along side mangoes and pawpaws. O.O
[2] Part of the Heath family, just like blueberries and huckleberries.
Alum/Lily Family: Crow garlic, various kinds of chives, onions, garlic, ramps, leeks (apparently asparagus is part of this family? Which seems odd, but I'll go with it)
Mustard Family: both in the sense of wild & cultivated pot veggies (garlic mustard vs kale vs radish greens vs red cabbage - which are less about seasoning but are still part of the palate) and in the sense of hot mustard, honey mustard, grainy mustard, and (potentially) horseradish.
Booze: In my case, this means wine/cider (including my fermentation failures that work as something closer to vinegar). But it also includes beer, port, whiskey, and potentially sherry. Also also other ferments (which is technically everything from sour kraut - also part of the mustard flavour profile - to vinegar and kombucha which are acetic acid ferments to, technically, cheese... see below).
Animal Stuff, Part 1: Milk, cream, yoghurt, salted butter, various cheeses (ANY cheeses) but, in particular, chevre, parmesan, and cheap cheddar (and occasionally a brie or a blue). Sometimes there's also kefir or cream cheese involved.
Animal Stuff, Part 2: Bone stock, bacon grease, duck fat, schmaltz, poorly home-rendered lard, a couple of tablespoons of diced cured sausage.
Mint Family: This is a LOT of aromatic herbs - everything from actual peppermint/apple mint/spearmint to culinary sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, savoury, and basil, to nettles (which are more like a pot vegetable), to lavender, bergamot, and anise hyssop, to a whole BUNCH of other, more medicinal stuff (like mugwort and skullcap).
Fruit: Rhubarb, apples, and cranberries, for the most part. Sometimes red currants. Sometimes other berries (service berries, raspberries, rather less frequently rosehips and sumac), sometimes other fruits (pears, apricots, nectarines, plums/prunes and, sometimes, imported citrus). But mostly those are my top three. (NOTE: Almost all of these are members of the rose family. The citrus isn't, the sumac[1], rhubarb, and cranberries[2] aren't. But everything else is).
~*~
Other plants we eat (veggies now, rather than seasonings):
Celeriac, cilantro, lovage, dill, and carrots (and, to a lesser extent, parsnips, chamomile, parsley, and fennel) are all part of the umbel family. These - particularly the lovage, dill, and cilantro, play a bigger part in my summer cooking (unless you count the dill seed I chuck in with my pickles), but I still tend to think of this family more as a "pot-veggies" family than as a "herbs" family, especially since lovage can get huge and basically be a hardy perennial substitute for celery...
Spinach, swiss/rainbow/ruby chard, sorrel, rhubarb (see above), amaranth, beets, buckwheat, quinoa, and lambsquarters are all part of the spinach/amaranth (goosefoot/knotweed) family. Sorrel and rhubarb notwithstanding, this is a veggies (rather than seasonings) family, but one that plays a pretty big role in my cooking.
Squash Family: Various pumpkins, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, zucchini and other summer squash, baby hubbard, delicata, sweet dumpling, buttercup, and whatever else I can swing, plus cucumbers and occasionally melons. The zucchini and the pumpkins get sliced/diced, steamed/baked, and frozen. The cukes get eaten in salads or else pickled. The winter squashes get eaten in a triaged manner. They're definitely part of the flavour profile, but they're not what I'd call a seasoning.
Nightshades like various tomatoes, bell peppers, thai chilies, jalapeno peppers, eggplants, potatoes, and ground cherries... they're hella flavourful (okay, MOSTLY hella flavourful. Less-so the eggplants and potatoes), but they play less of a role in my day-to-day cooking/seasoning than they do in other households.
I mostly ignore the aster family. Other than the dandelions, I mean. Tarragon in lovely, but we don't get a lot of it and I don't tend to miss it the way I would horribly miss hot mustard or garlic or white wine in my cooking.
Grass Family: Wheat and barley, a little bit of rye flour when I'm making sourdough bread, oats (sometimes as whole groats, more often as rolled oats or oat flour) occasionally make an appearance, rice comes in and out. But mostly the grains we stick with are wheat (flour) and barley (pot and pearl).
Pea/Pulse Family: red lentils, green lentils (which I sprout), mung beans (which I sprout), chick peas, romano beans, great northern beans, various kidney beans, black beans... and also cranberry beans, edamame, snow peas, sugar peas, various green snap beans, scarlet runner beans, and lima beans. We eat them, but I rarely (successfully) grow them, and they're not exactly flavourful. Though red lentils are peppery as heck, who'd have thought. O.O
Anyway. This has been my thinky-thoughts for the evening.
TTFN,
Amazon.
[1] Part of the Cashew family - much to my surprise - right along side mangoes and pawpaws. O.O
[2] Part of the Heath family, just like blueberries and huckleberries.