Читать книгу Self-Sufficiency: Herbs and Spices - Linda Gray - Страница 6

Over the past couple of decades or so, processed sugars and excess salt have infiltrated our diets and changed the way we perceive pleasurable tastes. The increased focus on healthy eating and the vogue for growing your own food has helped promote the idea of exploring new tastes, and steering the family’s taste buds away from sugary snacks to appreciating good food and natural flavours.

Herbs and spices that you grow yourself can do just that, and even if you have never grown a plant before, herbs are a good place to start, whether you have a large garden or just an available windowsill.

The difference between herbs and spices is simply the part of the plant used. The leaves and flowers of plants are generally regarded as the herbs while the seeds, roots, stigmas and even bark are considered to be spices.

For many thousands of years, herbs have been considered magical plants – humans have used them for millennia as food and as medicine. Those who knew what to do with herbs were sometimes treated with suspicion and sometimes revered. Spices, on the other hand, were shrouded in mystery until recent times – their exotic nature and origins were mythologized by the spice traders over the centuries to keep the prices as high as possible.

In our present information-packed world we can have it all, and growing herbs and spices at home is one of the most satisfying projects anyone can take on. The wonderful tastes of herbs and spices can encourage even the most jaded palate to enjoy good food again. And the more good food we eat the less we want the stuff that is not so good for us.