All About Thyme: August 2024

Finding a little more green in your life

August’s Special Days: A Potpourri of Celebrations

Herb of the Year for 2024.  Yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Selected by the International Herb Association
Flower of the Month for August: Gladiolus
August is National Watermelon Month

Week 1 
August 1. Lughnasadh, an ancient Gaelic harvest festival that was Christianized as Lammas (“Loaf Mass”), now celebrated by Pagans and Wiccans in the Wheel of the Year.

Week 2
August 6. The 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Shakers (premier herbalists of the 19th century) in New York Harbor, on a ship called Mariah.
August 10. Chicago IL was incorporated as a village (population 200) in 1833.

Week 3
August 15. The birthday of Julia Child (1912-2004), Our Lady of the Ladle, who introduced Americans to the art of French cuisine.
August 17. National Vanilla Custard Day. Also the Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingham.

Week 4 
August 19. National Potato Day. Believe it or not, NASA grew spuds in space.
August 22. Sun moves into Virgo, the sixth House of the Zodiac. Look for the Virgo issue of my new Growing Green with the Zodiac to drop into your in-box first thing that morning.

Week 5
August 26. Women’s Equality Day seems to have extra importance on this 124th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. (Yes, food is definitely political! Remember the Boston Tea Party? And see book suggestion below.)
August 28. “Brad’s Drink” got a new name on this day in 1898.
August 29. Just what we all need! National More Herbs Less Salt Day.

An addiction to gardening is not all bad
when you consider the other choices in life.—Cora Lea Bell

The peaches are ripe and luscious, the market is displaying beautiful raspberries, blueberries, and cherries, and your garden is full of fresh herbs. Use them, along with a variety of spices, to make flavored vinegars that will spark salads and fruit dishes in months to come. Start now, and you’ll have a shelf of wonderful taste-tempters (and delightfully unique gifts) this winter.

 You'll need fruit and herbs (suggestions below), enough vinegar to cover the fruit, and lidded containers. Here are the easy directions.

• Assemble your jars and lids (pint, quart, half-gallon: size depends on the amount of fruit you're working with). Wash and scald.

• Pit the fruit if necessary, cut it up, or mash it lightly. Wash the fresh herbs and bruise lightly.

• Heat the vinegar to just below boiling.

• Put fruit and herbs into jars and cover completely with hot vinegar. Leave 1/4" head space.

• Put on the lid and set the container in a dark, cool place, shaking or stirring every day and making sure that the vinegar covers the fruit and herbs. Steep as long as a month, checking for flavor.

• When the flavor suits you, remove fruit and strain vinegar through a coffee filter until it is clear.

• Rebottle in washed, scalded jars. Label. Best to store in refrigerator (up to 6 months).

Some fruitful combinations

 Fruits and apple cider vinegar:

• Raspberries with lemon thyme and rosemary

• Cherries with tarragon and anise hyssop

• Cranberries with mint, orange peel, cinnamon stick

Fruits and white wine or champagne vinegar:

• Peaches with opal basil, cinnamon stick

• Raspberries with fragrant rose petals, rose geranium

• Strawberries with mint, candied ginger

• Strawberries and peaches with opal basil, candied ginger

And for a tasty read: The Vinegar Cupboard, by Angela Clutton. It’ll give you some ideas for using your fruity, home-crafted vinegars.

August’s To-Do List

• Take advantage of the great $2.99 Chirp sale of the audio edition of Rosemary Remembered—and harvest a few other titles in that series for your collection. (You have until 8/25 to make this happen.)

• The Shakers made major contributions to the creation of an American herb culture. For some background and some interesting recipes, check out this post.

• Okay, so what's the connection between Chicago and herbs? I’m sure you know that the onion is an herb. But did you know that the place-name "Chicago" means "onion field"? The Algonquin word Chigagou first appears in a 1688 French document, with the note that wild onions and garlic grew profusely in the area.

• Celebrate St. Julia's Day by reading her book, My Life in France. You might also enjoy the memoir Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, by Julie Powell, who cooked all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking—and lived to blog about it. Then of course the blog became a book (naturally) and the book became a film, starring Meryl Streep as the irrepressible Lady of the Ladle. [Your Amazon purchases net a small affiliate fee to Story Circle Network.]

• On Women’s Equality Day, check out Laura Kumin’s All Stirred Up: Suffrage Cookbooks, Food, and the Battle for Women's Right to Vote. This intriguing book celebrates the surprisingly subversive message cooked up by our grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

•  Observe Vanilla Custard Day with some seriously good custard. Vanilla pods are the fruit of the vanilla planifolia, the only edible orchid. For a seriously good mystery (if I do say so myself), try A Plain Vanilla Murder, China’s 27^th adventure. And while you’re at it, you might also check out Wormwood, China’s visit to a Shaker village with a complicated herbal backstory.

• If you'd rather make your vanilla custard with condensed/evaporated milk, here's how. You might also be interested in how Gail Borden came to develop canned milk and why it was so important at the time—a bit of food history that you probably didn't hear in school. What's the difference between condensed or evaporated and sweetened condensed milk? Here's the low-down.

  

  Advertisement for Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, developed by Gail Borden. Credit: Courtesy / Boston Public Library

• On Potato Day, read Crunch! A History of the Great American Potato Chip, by Dick Burhans. The story of how the pedestrian potato (once considered medicinal) was transformed into America's favorite snack food—and the dark side of that picture. And here’s one of my favorite (and easy) ways with potatoes. (We prefer rosemary and thyme to oregano, and I often add a dash or two of cider vinegar to the mayo.)

• Learn the history of one of the most famous soft drinks of all time. North Carolina pharmacist Caleb Bradham brewed up a drink he called "Brad's Drink," designed to ease indigestion and boost energy. It was concocted of carbonated water, sugar, vanilla, "rare oils," and high-caffeine kola nut extract. He didn't think his name did much to sell his product, so on August 28, 1898, he gave it a catchy new name: "Pepsi-Cola." The rest is history.

Thanks for reading, friends! I’d appreciate it if you’d ask your favorite librarian to put you on the waiting list for the latest China Bayles mystery, Forget Me Never. Available in print, digital, audio. And I’ll be back with you next Monday with the August issue of LifeScapes.