a pinch of: default herbs.

I love these herbs. I mean, really. You know how I love default dinners? Well, if ever there was a pile of herbs at my side, ready to join the ranks of my tomato sauce and creamy soups, roasted vegetables and hand-made meatballs: here they are. The herbs on my hip. I should probably invest in a holster. I now make them in bulk. Yes, I use them that often.

And I am happy to say, these herbs have recently become my ubiquitous kitchen gift giveaway. I go through phases of kitchen-inspired gifts, trinket-y hand-outs that let people know I have so much time on my hands [cough, cough], that I hand-dipped this spoon just for you in chocolate, drizzled it with caramel, rolled it in nuts and tied it up with cellophane and a bow. It is a bad segue into 'so, what did you do today?'

All I am trying to say is, I like making thoughtful---and useful---hand-made gifts from the kitchen. Sometimes it is homemade granola, around the holidays it is most certainly peppermint bark (and you don' t need time to make that one, you can do it between sips of coffee in the morning), limoncella (okay, yes, that one takes a substantial amount of time plus about 80 days to marinate...) and now: default herbs.

But, I am not close enough to you to hand you a fancy little jar with a hand-written card (sans calligraphy, in this case I printed out a small recipe for this salad dressing and attached it to the jar). Thus, I am giving you the picture, the idea, the recipe for herbs, some recipes that include these herbs (keep reading) and am humbly asking you to make it yourself and then give it to yourself, from me.

Wow, that saves me a ton of time.

I use default herbs in: Buttermilk Parmesan Chicken, as the Italian herbs in this Baked Omelette, instead of all the 'other' herbs in my Roasted Romas, and in this fancy but easy to make Eggplant Parmesan, to name just a few.

Default Herbs 1/8 cup dried rosemary 1/4 cup dried oregano 1/4 cup dried basil 1/2 tsp allspice 2 T dried thyme 1 1/2 tsp dried marjoram 1 T fresh ground white pepper 2 T fresh ground black pepper

Process rosemary in a food process, mix all ingredients, store in sealed container. 6 months.

To make the pretty jar, I just used a canning jar, cut a circle of fancy paper and screwed it on between the lid and screw top.