Herbs, Wonderful Herbs

Every eating plan these days seems to point to the same thing - eat more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein, eat more fish and less beef, avoid white, refined starches and sugars, and use olive or canola oil moderately.  In order to do that and not get bored, we need flavor.  It just makes sense to experiment with fresh and dried herbs, and sometimes you can hit on combinations that make you wonder why you never tried it before.  Plus, it's great fun experimenting!

Let's take dill weed.  I once read that dill was good in a variety of things, including eggs.  Eggs?  Yuck.  Or so I thought.  But here is how I found out how good it really is.  I was making an easy fish dinner (more on that later) that contained dill.  Then, as I often do, I grabbed all of the fresh vegetables out of my refrigerator that I could find - some zucchini, broccoli, celery, cauliflower and carrots.  Usually green pepper (or red, or yellow) is good too.  I chopped up some onion, sauteed it with some fresh garlic in a little olive oil, and added the chopped vegetables for a stir-fry.  I seasoned it with Nature's Seasons (Morton's had better never stop making that), and then since I was using dill on my fish, I added some dried dill weed to the vegetables.  It was GREAT and really complemented the fish.  A couple of days later I was making eggs for breakfast, so, trying to be healthy I decided to scramble them with some of the leftover vegetables.  I heated the veggies in a tiny bit of butter, added two scrambled eggs and a diced piece of American cheese, and cooked until the eggs were set.  No kidding, the dilled vegetables in the eggs were DELICIOUS!

In my next blog I will tell you about the health benefits of dill, but here's the easy recipe for the fish with dill, given to me by Susan, whose friend, Jan, makes her cod this way.

Baked Cod with Dill (Edited version)

1 lb. fresh cod fillets
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
2 tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. dried dill weed

Preheat oven to 350⁰. Combine olive oil, mustard and lime juice into a thin paste.  Place the fish fillets on a lightly oiled baking pan, then sprinkle the dill over the fillets.  Bake in oven approximately 14 minutes, until fish is cooked through and flaky.  Serves 3.