Showing posts with label basil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basil. Show all posts

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Organic Basil in the works, and how to protect your plants from illness

Vman103-Productions
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I have been growing plants for some time now, and it is time for me to start my next season of Basil. I grow organic, heirloom Basil. But what does organic mean? It's important to understand if you want to grow plants in an environmentally friendly way. Do you want to learn how to grow organically?

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Basil article update

Vman103-Productions
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My newest article on Basil is up!

Tuesday October 15 12:30:02am Central, YEAR 2013

I have finished my Basil article! The link is above, but you probably knew that already. In any case, this Basil article will be my last for a while. I do not make articles very often because I'm not naturally driven. I need inspiration before I am willing to put out the time and effort. The next time I write an article, it will have nothing to do with herbs. It's time to branch out! I also want you to check out my homepage. Every post I write on this blog has a link to my central website on Angelfire. The changes I've made might surprise you.

In other news, I have an exciting announcement to make. I have come up with a central theme to my website: the sharing of practical and fun knowledge! My index page's introduction will fill you in. Basically I will teach things from gardening to cooking and even non-related topics such as speed reading and study techniques. But these are just a few examples.


Lastly, I have something to say to a friend of mine whom I talked to the other day. I told her I was going to make Thai green curry. This is how it turned out: I made a homemade chicken stock using only turmeric, onion powder, and garlic powder. I then cooked up some chicken to put in my curry, and steamed some vegetables to go along with it, as well as slices of a portabella mushroom.

In a quart-size stainless steal pan I made a 1/4 cup Jasmine rice. First I parboiled it, dumped the water, then cooked it as if to make it sticky. I made the stock in this same pan before doing the rice, so the turmeric powder ended up colouring my rice yellow. For those who don't know, turmeric has a lot of health benefits, and it can even help you with various health issues. So that was a good occurence for me.

A word of advice: don't use a lot of turmeric, if any, when you want your curry anything but yellow. When I made the actual green curry, I took a homemade green curry paste--really just a bunch of cut up green chili peppers--and fried it in a wok for several seconds. That was a horrible experience for my lungs and larynx. *Cough*

I then poured the stock into the outrageously hot carbon steel wok--that might have been a bad idea. It's generally not good to thermal shock any cookware, even if it's metal; in which case, at least it doesn't crack. It just warps instead, as I have had the pleasure of finding out. I added powdered sassafras leaf and coconut flour because they are natural and healthy sauce thickeners. I also added some of my home-grown sweet Basil leaves. As I mentioned in my previous post, I failed to germinate some lemon basil seeds, so I can only use sweet basil--not that this plant is bad or anything...

I put all the chicken, vegetables and mushroom slices inside the wok, along with some coconut milk I bought from Fox Farms. I somehow managed to take what was previously yellow in colour and make it look closer to green, instead. Probably because I had a butt-load of green vegetables, basil leaves, and sassafras leaf powder in it. I forgot to mention, I even added kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass, since they are a staple in Thai cuisine.

What people may not know is that Thai cooking is not just mindlessly throwing in different ingredients together and chancing upon a tasty dish. Acknowledged Thai food expert David Thompson even said that the dishes are a deceptively simple combination of flavors. Thai food specializes in a well-balanced combination of three or four basic flavors: spicy, salty, sweet, and sour.

I combined the sweetness of the creamy coconut milk and coconut flour, the saltiness of Tamari soy sauce I bought(brand is San-J), the sourness of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and two laco-fermented carrots, along with the spiciness of the chili peppers. And even though I was not exactly scientific about it, I still managed to come up with a pretty decent menu. I am not as precise as the Thai cooks, but I am experienced in home cooking.

But I ultimately want to make a dish as good as the ones I've tasted in restaurants twice. Man, that was good. I had only red curry both times. They really know their food well!





That's the end of this post. When I have anything else to tell you I will do so. Until then...!

If you have any questions or comments, please use the comment form below! As long as it has value, and it doesn't make parents cringe, I will allow it.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

How I've been growing Basil

Vman103-Productions
Website 

A quick follow up on my Basil article. I actually started growing some of my own Basil in my apartment balcony. I ordered my seeds from Granny's Heirloom Seeds. These were large leaf Italian Basil.

So far into September, I am still harvesting leaves. I sowed the seed around April 4th, 2013. I used a woven basket-looking pot with a plastic lining to prevent water damage, and to keep the dirt inside and trap moisture. I sowed the seeds and it took 30 days to start growing harvest-able leaves. This has to be the fastest herb around!

Let me clarify something: the article I've posted is a tad dated and in need of touching up. On top of that, I will eventually redesign the website by editing the CSS and the actual html in order to reflect changes in the mark-up itself. I'm currently in the process of converting to HTML5.

Meanwhile, here is what I've been doing during my absence. Aside from a lot of stuff that's happened, I started getting into gardening a lot more. Right now, I have one Basil plant and one strong French Marigold plant. In spite of its fungal infection, it is still blooming like crazy.

I will post a follow up article on how to grow Basil. It will be simpler, more to the point, and will not allow for any distractions. I'll also post my newfound knowledge o Basil.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Vman103-Productions
Website 

http://tinyurl.com/7pjvsfp
Newly added Article 

Copy and paste the above URL or just click the link. This is my new article on gardening Sweet Basil. As I said before, my article was to be about gardening. And I have delivered my promise, right on time!

Here is the small introduction you find on my website's homepage:
The Sweet Basil plant is the most popular of the Basil plants. It is extensively used in Italian, French, Greek and some Asian cuisines. Would you like to have this good smelling herb flavor your dishes? If that is the case, read on. This hardy plant thrives in hot climates with plenty of sunlight. But that is just the beginning. In this article, I will show you how to plant your own Basil garden.