A royal afternoon

Have you heard of basil leaf? Maybe you did, from Restaurant City, Facebook.

 

Basil meaning ‘king’ in Greek is of the Mint family. The herb has a strong refreshing smell and is prominently featured in Italian dishes. I accompanied my mum to the morning market today and we bought Basil, which is pretty cheap (A big bundle for RM1). Basil grows in hot and dry conditions and is native to Asia.

 

Basil grows to between 30–130 cm tall. The flowers are small, white in color and arranged in a terminal spike (reminds me of Baby Breath). So, what i normally do is pluck off the leaves, put them into bags and store them in the refrigerator to keep fresh.

 

 

Mum and I use Basil in many ways.

 

1. We use it in our salad when we’re down on lettuce. But even when we have lettuce, we add a tad bit of Basil and it’ll smell wonderful.
2. We cook Basil and pine nuts in olive oil to create Pesto (to go with Spaghetti). 
3. A few Basil are added into our sandwiches and fried eggs. Less oily (:
4. Smash the Basil and add it’s juice with soy sauce. You’ll know how great the combination is when eaten with poultry and seafood.
5. Sometimes we blend it into our smoothies!

*Basil goes excellent with tomatoes

 

All the while, Mum and I only used the leafs and disposed the flowers and stems. While cleaning the Basil today, I realise Basil flowers had the strongest aroma and thought, hey why not I use it to brew tea?!

 

And thus I begun my experiment:

I plucked the flowers and buds, cleaned and dried them.

 

Took mum’s giler expansive but awesome beyond words punye Earl Grey.

 

Spooned all Basil flower into teapot.

 

Brew it with Earl Grey.

 

SUCCESS! Heavenly, omg, heavenly (:

I’m a genius lah really.

 

We also had kuih.

 

So we had our very own high tea, hahahahahaha

& that’s my mum’s sexy leg, in her much loved Hawaiian pants.

 

The day was spent reading. And falling asleep listening to 2046 OST’s Siboney.

 

Life is art & mum has taught me to live it with class. Awesome Possum.

I’m not attending college, so everyday is pretty much like that.

And also travelling, which I’ll blog about soon (since I’m going soon lah!)

 

 

Oh & hey, next time, I’ll know what to do with the flowers (: