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    One thing that I have been fascinated about lately, is regrowing my store purchased vegetables!  It is so awesome to know that I can really get my money's worth out of the fresh vegetables that I purchase.  When the stores had shelves that were much more bare than we are used to, It appealed to me to grow edible house plants that I could just clip leaves from and add to recipes whenever I wanted to.  What a great way to add some freshness to your diet.  Here are some of the items I've been growing and how I've been doing it. 

Green Onions-One of the easiest things to regrow! 

     Green onions are a vegetable that you can practically watch grow. when you cut off the white part of the stalk that includes the rood end and place them in water.  I use small jelly jars.  In the photo above you can see the ones on the right that I just started, the ones in the middle that I have snipped a time or two and the ones on the right that are ready to be used.  The great thing is that I can just clip some onion and then grow them again!  They grow so well hydroponically that there is no need to ever replant them in soil, but you can if you wish. 

​Carrots are also super easy!

     The great thing about carrots is that the tops are edible and they are feathery and pretty.  After awhile, the roots may actually form into a new, weirdly shaped carrot, but I think the beauty of these carrots is to keep them growing inside as an edible houseplant and snip leaves as you need them.  Later in this article I'll give you some suggestions about how to add these vegetables to your recipes. 
      To regrow carrots, purchase carrots that still have their tops on them.  Generally, this will be in the organic section of the grocery store.  Remove the greens and cut off about an inch of the top of the carrot.  Place the top, cut side down in a shallow dish of water.  Watch the water levels daily.  I used filtered water from my Brita pitcher to water all of my plants.  In a few days, you will see little sprouts coming up around the ring on the carrot.  As they begin grow, you may also see little feathery roots begin to form.  As the greens begin to get to be about 3 inches tall, transplant them into a pot with a nice potting mix and continue to water them.  Don't put them out in the heat!  Carrots like cooler temperatures, so they will do better indoors. (I learned this from sad experience.)  

​Lettuce

     I often purchase produce from a local distributor.  In one of the boxes was a beautiful head of leaf lettuce.  I cut the root bottom off of the head and popped it into water.  It quickly began to grow more lettuce!  I talked to my sister Carol about it, and she told me that she regrows her lettuce all of the time!  She has found that the best results is that once you transplant it into soil, water it from the bottom.  So, use a saucer under your pot and put the water in there.  Lettuce also prefers cooler weather, so if you want to put it outside in your garden, do it in the Fall or early Spring.   Or, keep it in the house as a plant.  You can cut off leaves as you like, or cut it all of the way back and it will regrow!   

Beets-The Healthiest! 

    I've talked to you about beets before on this post.  Anita gave me another supply of them, so I decided to see if I could sprout them.  I plopped the tops of the beet root into water, much like I did the carrots.  As you can see, one of them already had sprouts on it, so I left them to see if they would still grow.  They did!  After they all started sprouting well, I trans planted them into soil.  They will eventually grow into beets, but I am mainly using the tops of these.  The red and green of the leaves make lovely houseplants and the tops are the healthiest part of the plant. 

Garlic-Many plants from one bulb! 

    You can simply take apart a garlic bulb and plant the cloves in soil, root side down, pointy side up and they will grow.  But, Anita gave me this tip.  Place the entire bulb in a jar with water in the bottom and the bottom of the bulb not touching.  In a few days, the bulb will start to fan open and the individual cloves will begin to sprout.  Next, you can take them apart and put them in soil and you have give your garlic plants a nice head start.  Mine began to sprout and I put them in soil yesterday.  
      The great thing about garlic is, you guessed it, the tops, better known as the scape, are totally edible!  You can use those nice green stalks just like you would garlic.  Not only that, garlic will flower and you may also use the flower seeds to add garlic flavor to your cooking. Just like the garlic cloves, the greens and seeds contain a natural antibiotic, manganese and iron. 

​How I've Used My Edible Plant Clippings So Far and Plan to in the Future! 

• To sneak a bit more fiber into my grandchildren's diet, I made an herbed rice.  I used green onions, carrot top and beet tops chopped very finely and they barely noticed them.  If you aren't a picky child, you can add more to your taste.  When my garlic scapes get longer, they will probably be great in here as well! 
• Adding herbs to biscuits is a savory treat.  I've already done it with onion and carrot tops.  Of course, garlic will be great! 
• All of these things will make a great addition to salad to add some interest and flavor.
• An herbed yeast bread is always good. I used onions, garlic and rosemary (which many people have growing decoratively in their yards) on my focaccia bread. 
• All of these veggies will also be delicious in homemade soup!  

More Vegetables That I am Planning to Try to Regrow in the Future

• celery
• bell peppers
• strawberries

    When I give those a try, I will totally give you an update.  
    I am so excited that aside from an outdoor garden, I will have some easy indoor alternatives!  Have you regrown any veggies from the grocery store?  Tell me you experience in the comments! 

This post contains affiliate links. I will be compensated for purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you. We do not share your information with other sites. All views expressed are our own.  Thank you for your support!

    Whoo Hoo!  This is a 2 pie week on the blog!  On Wednesday, Alicia showed you her beautiful Vanilla Apple Galette.  She lives in the Bay Area of California where it isn't too hot to bake.  But, if you live in Phoenix, this Root Beer Float Pie is the way to go.  
     It is not secret that I absolutely love root beer and root beer floats.  I did an entire post about how make the perfect on here. My favorite part of a root beer float is when the ice cream gets all melted into the root beer leaving creamy deliciousness.  That is the part of the float that this pie reminds me of.  To make it extra creamy, I use half and half in the recipe.  To make the root beer flavor really come through, I use root beer extract along with real high quality root beer.  

     To top the root beer filling, I refuse to use a non-dairy frozen topping.  Only the real stuff for me, real whipped cream! And don't forget the cherries, even though the juice gives a blood like appearance, the kids will love that!  The cherry flavor really gives some authentic root beer float taste. 

Root Beer Float Pie

    I hope you love it!  Let me know if you give it a try! 

Here are a couple other root beer recipes:

• ​The Perfect Root Beer Float
• ​Root Beer Pancakes

​    My son baked some focaccia Bread, and then his SIL did as well.  The pictures looked so delicious.  I had never made focaccia bread myself and decided to give it a try.  I have a number of herbs that I have been growing and this was the perfect opportunity to use them in a new way.  

    ​Focaccia Bread is very easy to make and is a lot of fun!  You really get to put your hands in the dough.  The outcome is so delicious because the olive oil is definitely the star of the show.  In addition, there are so many topping choices that a variety of flavors are possible if you are making more than one loaf.  Wouldn’t that be nice on a luncheon table?  Many people use focaccia for sandwiches or for pizza, and of course, just to eat all by itself. 

​    As I mentioned, focaccia bread is very easy to make.  My first attempt came out so good!  I was nervous because there was so much olive oil!  But, when it came out of the oven that was all incorporated into a bread that was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.  The olive oil and the herbs with that sprinkle of salt were an explosion of flavor in my mouth.  

​    One tip to get the most flavor from the herbs is to make sure that they are coated with the olive oil.  I watched some Italian You Tubers who gave that suggestion.  I guess the oil helps to bring out the flavor and convey it to the bread dough.  So, you will notice in the recipe that I soaked my herbs in the olive oil that I used in the bread dough and also drizzled over the bread. 

​    Another tip is about the kneading technique for this bread.  Not everyone does this method, but a number of bakers do and I decided to try it.  It is the stretching and pulling method.  I like it because the dough is pretty sticky and needs to be in order to get the texture that you want in focaccia bread.  With ​the stretch and pull method of kneading, you are elongating the gluten without adding too much flour to the mix as you would with a regular kneading method.  Here is how you do it:

​

• Put your ball of dough onto a medium floured board.
• Think of the dough as being in 4 sections, or quarters like this:

​

• Starting at one of the quarters, take the edge in your hand and stretch it out away from the ball of dough, then fold it over the top of the ball. Then, move to the next quarter and do that stretch and pull all of the way around the ball until you have done all 4 quarters.
• Flip the ball of dough over and repeat the process.  Flour your fingers and under the dough as needed.  I did this process 4 times, twice on each side of the ball.

After 4 or 5 times, your ball of dough should be looking nice and smooth.  Now you will place it in a well oiled bowl and allow it to rise. 

​    My final tip pertains to dimpling the top of the bread.  Focaccia is supposed to have lots of lumps, bumps and crannies where the oil and toppings can gather.  Adding the dimples also keeps the bread from rising too quickly.  Focaccia is a flat bread and this is a way of keeping it that way! Putting water on your fingers helps them not to stick in the dough.  Then, use those fingers to push into the dough to form the dimples. It is the fun part of making this bread! Don’t be afraid to push in until you feel the bottom of the pan. 

    My recipe is a conglomeration of various recipes and videos that I watched as I tried to glean information about making focaccia.  Some of the videos weren’t even in English! But, my main source was probably from Immaculate Bites who also gave me the instruction to infuse the oil with the herb flavor, although she did it differently than I did.  You may want to go to her site to see how she did it.  She used her machine to do the kneading and didn’t do the stretching and pulling method, so you can choose to do it whichever way you prefer.  Focaccia seems to be a hands on bread though.  Many people mixed all of it by hand from start to finish!   But, here is the recipe that I ended up adapting to my preferences.  I hope you enjoy it!

    One last tip!  Focaccia Bread tastes the very best when it is still warm on the first day it is made, so have some friends over or get all of your kids to the table and eat it all up!  You can warm up the leftovers in the microwave, but I still think the first moments after it cools slightly out of the oven is the best time to gobble it down! 

​This post contains affiliate links. I will be compensated for purchases made through those links at no additional cost to you. All views expressed are my own. Thank you for your support!

   During this period of the covid-19 pandemic, I have begun ordering and purchasing produce from a local distributor.  They have great prices and nice produce and I was even able to get yeast from them!  One day recently, I ordered a bag of cilantro.  It didn't sound like very much according to the weight of the bag.  But, cilantro is very light apparently and the bag of cilantro that I got was HUGE! Knowing how quickly cilantro will wilt and get slimy, I tried to see if my daughters or son needed any.  They all refused it,  saying they had just purchased some!  I started using it in salsa and every recipe possible, but I barely made a dent in that giant bag. 
    Fast Forward to my grandsons outdoor, socially safe birthday, where I sat having a conversation with Anita and her DL Julia, each 6 feet away from me,  and I tell them about my cilantro dilemma!  Julia, an excellent cook and baker, suggested that I could put the cilantro in olive oil and freeze it in ice cube trays!  Then, when I don't have fresh cilantro in the house, I can just pop a cube of the frozen stuff in my recipe and it will still taste fresh! So, after I got home, I started looking things up about freezing herbs online.  Isn't it amazing how many different methods you can find on there? I looked things over, and this is what I did: 

    I had one spare ice cube try to use to freeze my cilantro!  In a food processor or blender, put 5 cups of fresh cilantro, stems and all and 3/4 cups of vegetable oil.  If your blender won't hold that much, you will have to chop it in batches. PULSE the blender or food processor until the cilantro is chopped up and covered with the oil.  I didn't want it to be a smooth cilantro puree, but to have leaves and bits of stem still showing.  Then, I put about a tablespoon of the oily cilantro into each slot of the ice cube tray.  I covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the freezer.  The beauty of this method is that when it is completely frozen, you can pop out the cubes and store them in the freezer in a plastic bag and then reuse the ice cube tray for something else! 

    Now, after using 5 cups of cilantro for that freezing project, you would think my problem would have been solved, right?  No way, I still had half of the cilantro left! Well, while I had been looking up ways of freezing my cilantro, I remembered noticing herbal salts.  Cue binging light bulb!  I began with the obvious, Cilantro-Lime Salt.  OH MY GOODNESS! THESE SALTS ARE SO EASY TO MAKE AND SO TASTY! I believe I have found this year's Christmas gifts!  The possibilities are endless!  I am going to give you 3 Cilantro Salt variations.  Under each initial photo I will give you ideas for their use and how I have tried them so far.  I think a set of 3 types of salts would make a great gift, or use other herbs to make salts, such as basil or thyme from your garden and give a variety of different salts in that way!  I used little Rubbermaid or Zip Lock containers to store them, or you could use shakers or canning jars.  I also designed labels that I am sharing with you to keep track of what is what and to give them a cute look. 

Cilantro-Lime Salt

Ingredients: 

• The zest of 8 limes.  Save the limes them selves for limeade or juice them and freeze the juice in cubes! I love using a microplane/zester for this job. 
• Enough chopped cilantro to measure 3/4 c.  I chopped mine with my Pampered Chef Hand Chopper because I didn't want it to puree in a blender or food processor. 
• 3/4 c. coarse Kosher salt.  You could also use sea salt.

In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients together thoroughly. Then spread them on a sheet pan that has sides. 

Place the pan, uncovered, into your oven set at its lowest heat setting.  Leave it there for an hour or two until the cilantro and zest are completely dry.  At this point you can start gathering the salt into the center of the pan, crumbling the big pieces of cilantro as you go. 

This recipe filled 2 Rubbermaid 4 ounce containers as pictured.  Then, I used Avery Address Labels #8160 to print little labels for my salts.  Click the button for the PDF to print your own! 

CROG Salt- A savory blend of Cilantro, Rosemary, Onion and Garlic

Ingredients:
3/4 c. loosely packed chopped cilantro
1 bunch finely chopped green onions, green part only
6 cloves finely chopped garlic
4 long sprigs of fresh rosemary, off the stem and chopped
1 c. coarse kosher salt
Blend all together in a bowl as before and spread on a sheet pan.  Because there are wetter ingredients in this recipe, it will take about 4 hours to dry well in the oven at the lowest setting.  When finished, crush up the larger chunks into the mix.  The tiny dry onion pieces will burst into powder!  I may have had a little too much fun with that.
I was able to get almost 3 containers of savory CROG from this recipe. 

Bacon-Cilantro Salt

Ingredients:
1 c. chopped cilantro, loosely packed
6 slices of crispy cooked bacon, crumbled.  Cut off any fatty, not crispy parts.  If possible, lower salt would be great.
3/4 c. coarse kosher salt. 
Like the other recipes, blend all of the ingredients together and spread them on a sheet pan.  Dry in your oven with it set on the lowest setting.  It took mine 3 to 4 hours to dry completely.  
Scrap everything together on the pan, crumbling even smaller as you do so. 
This recipe filled 2 containers. 

      The measurement of the ingredients is somewhat loose, and you can adjust them as you wish as you make yours.  After making these recipes, I was able to bring down the amount of cilantro that I had to a manageable level.  If you grow your own herbs or if you have access to a large amount of them like I do from a produce supplier, just think of the possibilities of making gifts this year!  It was quick and easy with a great result.  Now my mind is racing with other flavor combinations.  Also, which containers did you like better?  What other flavor combinations do you think would work well?  Let me know in the comments! 
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