How to Make Dill Butter When You've Got a Lot of Herbs

Got a lot of dill? Quickly turn it into an herbed butter. Use this butter on potatoes, fish, or bread. It's a fast way to add a little something local & homemade to your holiday table.

Time for another Practical Support for Local Eating lesson. This one is about herbs. When we get herbs in our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share it's not usually a sprig here and there. Instead it is a significant amount.

Sometimes I view the abundance of herbs as an opportunity to use them all in Pot Luck Tabbouleh. Sometimes this will coincide with another vegetable and create an opportunity to put something up [a bunch of cucumbers and dill means I'll throw a few jars of quick refrigerator kosher dills into the back of the fridge to cure]. Sometimes a large quantity of basil from the farm share coupled with my own large quantity from the garden means I can Process a Pile of Pesto. Most of the time, however, the herbs are on their own.

Making herb butter when you've got a lot of fresh herbs is one way to make the most of the farm share. This freezes nicely and makes a special addition to a holiday meal. Too early for Thanksgiving talk? Canadian Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away and I've got a beautiful bunch of dill from my farm share so I think it's quite timely.

Before I get to the recipe, though, I asked a few food bloggers for additional ideas on how they deal with a large amount of herbs. Brandy of Farmer's Wife Rambles shares how she dehydrates parsley. Tara of Noshing With The Nolands turns her basil abundance into Basil Ice Cubes. Sheri Silver freezes her herbs in oil--with a clever tip for telling them all apart in the tray. Meghan of Clean Eats Fast Feets shares how she deals with her chives (and shares a recipe for Blue Cheese & Chive Drop Biscuits). Janelle of Barn2Door dries thyme, oregano for cooking, mint & blackberry/raspberry leaves/fennel seed for tea, and freezes finely chopped chives. She even has a Pinterest board of herb-y ideas.

Left to right photos from Brandy, Tara, Sheri and Meghan. Thanks!

Cream Cheese Toffee Dip for Fruit (My Apple Dip)

A fruit dip made from cream cheese, yogurt, brown sugar and the crunch of milk chocolate toffee bits. This is great for parties or special afternoon snacks and appeals to all ages.

Apples have been appearing at my local farmer's market. I buy a handful, take them home, slice them up and we eat them. [The rest of the household would eat the core and everything, but someone around here needs to have standards.] Local apples** are bred for flavor, not ability to look pretty for 6 months, so it seems kinda silly to share a dip recipe to eat with such tasty apples as a Buckeye Gala. This is not gilding a lily, though--my Caramel Apple Toffee Parfait with Cream Cheese Ice Cream? Total lily-gilding, that one. This is just a simple dip to have on hand if you want to dress up a fruit snack or have something special to go alongside a healthy snack at an event.

You gotta have a couple of good dips in your repertoire. Dips that you can make practically with your eyes closed using common pantry and refrigerator staples. Dips that fit a variety of occasions and please folks of all ages.

This is one of those dips. [My Spiced Cottage Cheese Potato Chip Dip is another.] When I searched my sent emails folder to confirm the recipe I realized I've been emailing folks this recipe for more than 10 years. It evolved out of an amaretto fruit dip I'd had at the same church basement wedding reception where I learned the pineapple juice hack for keeping apples from turning brown. I don't usually have amaretto on hand, so when I tried a Cool Whip-based fruit dip using Heath bar bits I knew that would go great instead of amaretto.

Note: I don't usually recommend brands of food on this blog, I'm more into the local produce, but I do make exceptions. This dip tastes best with Heath bar bits, the milk chocolate-covered toffee bits. The bag has an orange banner--like this Amazon affiliate link shows [but don't buy it from Amazon--sheesh you can find it for ⅓ the price in a grocery store]. Each time I move, as I am settling into our new neighborhood, I check the chocolate chip aisle of the local grocery stores. Most will carry only the plain Bits o' Brickle variety with a blue banner as shown in this outrageously expensive Amazon affiliate link but keep looking until you source the milk chocolate variety then buy a couple of bags for the pantry stash. They are good in cookies, too, like my Toffee Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies.

For other recipes using apples, please see my Apple Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, and generous neighbors with apple trees. I've got more appetizers on my Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks board on Pinterest, and more fruit from around the web on my Fruit board. Want to know how to use this blog? Click here.

Apple, Gouda and Pecan Pizza

Chunks of apples, bits of pecans, and loads of melty Gouda cheese in this savory vegetarian pizza.

When you make pizzas nearly every weekend, and you like to keep things lively on the pizza stone [don't think too deeply on that one] inspiration comes at you from every direction. This pizza was inspired by a photo of a grilled cheese sandwich on this post. Apparently that's enough for me to go off in a pizza direction.

A vegetarian, savory, pizza with fruit direction.

When I shared my Fresh Pineapple and Shaved Ham with Mascarpone Pizza recently, a friend said her spouse didn't do fruit on pizza. What?  Fruit on pizza rocks!  I'm not talking sweet fruit dessert pizzas. In the multitude of pizzas in my Visual Pizza Recipe Index by Ingredient I do not have any dessert pizzas. I'll eat them, don't get me wrong, I just haven't made any. I'm just not that into it. In my world, fruit on a pizza is not a dessert thing. It's a Savory Pizzas with Fruit thing.

So I'm bringing you yet another savory pizza with fruit. Yet another pizza with apples on it, this one inspired by that grilled cheese sandwich photo and the fact that I had a Costco-sized hunk of gouda cheese in the fridge.

I get cheese obsessions, probably a good thing when I've got a Costco-sized hunk of whatever flavor obsession du jour fromage. Having an ample amount of cheese makes for interesting recipes. I've used gouda in Roasted Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Breakfast Casserole and Three Cheese Fast-baked Cauliflower so far. Stay tuned for more, like this vegetarian savory pizza which is lovely for Fall.

For more recipes using apples, please see my Apples & Apple Cider Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share or farmer's market. I've got an assortment of other pizza ideas on my Friday Night Pizza Night! Pinterest board and my Visual Pizza Recipe Index.