Bulk Herbs For Health

                                                                                         

Every family can use a variety of dried herbs for many different purposes. For cooking, drinking, health, cleaning, crafts and fragrance, dried herbs and spices offer a wealth of possibilities.

Keeping a variety of herbs and spices on hand in the kitchen makes it a pleasure to whip up your favorite dishes from regional cuisines. There is no greater pleasure than to step outside into your own vegetable garden and harvest the best it has to offer, or alternately, head out to your local farmers' market, pick up whatever is freshest that day, and then head back to your kitchen to turn it into your dinner. For impromptu cooking, having a wide range of herbs and spices makes it easy to season each ingredient to perfection.

Dried herbs are also useful for nights when you pull together a "pantry supper." These are the types of meals for which you keep the basic staples on hand year round. Meals that feature dried rice, beans or pastas come to mind, as well as canned ingredients such as diced tomatoes, olives and artichoke hearts can combine into any number of different dishes. Keeping bulk herbs on hand such as oregano, black pepper, cumin, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, paprika and others allows you to create dishes from a variety of cuisines using simple, easy to find ingredients and can be put together quickly for a nice dinner at home any weeknight after work.

If you love the wonderful scent that is associated with many dried herbs, you might also enjoy aromatherapy. Aromatherapy utilizes essential oils from bulk herbs that are then used in tiny amounts to scent the air in a room or around your person. The essential oils produced from dried herbs are more highly scented when they are heated, and you will find scent diffusers that achieve this in different ways.

Dried herbs are also useful around the home. You can purchase bulk herbs such as lavender and lemon leaves and use them in cloth bags in your dryer to gently scent your laundry with a clean, natural fragrance. You can use bulk herbs to create your own custom potpourri, with ingredients of your own choosing, to scent any room in your home.

Bulk herbs also come in handy for craft and decorating projects. You can craft a wonderfully scented wreath using bulk herbs such as bay leaves or any of the citrus leaves, wired together in clusters, added to additional dried spices such as star anise, and then grouped around a wire or grapevine wreath frame.

This is just a small sampling of ways to use herbs around your home; there are endless possibilities.

About the author:
In this article Anne Harvester writes about herbs and spices.

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