It's not all about soap

Soap making has taken a back seat this last month, although I have made some liquid soap, more about that in another post. I currently have the best vegetable garden I have ever had, the tomatoes are ripening, we have beans galore, the snow peas and other peas are producing really well, as are the chillis, carrots, and beetroot.The mizuna has been beautiful and we are still eating it although some of it is starting to go to seed. One thing we have an abundance of is basil, I only brought one punnet and at the time it didn't look like much, but it grew, and grew. Yesterday I wanted to make some of my "green gunge" which is a salad / vegetable dressing made with whatever herbs I can find in the garden, garlic, lemon juice or cider vinegar, and olive oil. So I went out looking for herbs and started at the basil, it had grown so much that I only picked basil. I brought it in and decided to freeze it. So here are the photos of how to freeze basil, or any other herb so that it is in an easily usable form when you want a hit of fresh summer herbs sometime during winter. 

This is how much basil I picked, the red container is a 3.5lt

Chop it up, as fine or as rough as you like.

stuff it into ice cube trays.

When it is all stuffed in, fill the trays up with water. This is how much  all that basil chopped  and squashed down to.
Freeze it, and be prepared for some strange comments. Especially if you have a guest for dinner and he brings ice cream.

The frozen basil the next day, ready to put into freezer bags. 

A word of warning, the basil will stain your ice cube trays, but there are worse things in life than basil flavoured ice cubes.

Now  when you are cooking a bolognaise, or a casserole, or soup, whatever. all you do is throw in a ice cube of herbs for a beautiful fresh hit of summer.