Basil Salt, Tarragon, And What We Know

I don’t remember how it happened.

Why Barb was going through our kitchen cabinets looking for spices in the early years of our friendship is beyond me, but what isn’t beyond me is the result of said search:

“You have garlic salt, onion salt, seasoning salt, sea salt, regular salt. I’m surprised you don’t have basil salt or something.”

The Christmas after that conversation, I made B some basil salt. If I’m not mistaken, she still has it…in the prescription bottle in which I presented it…with very much laughter.

In the years since my basil salt creation, my palette has been exposed to many new spices, and I’ve been much more adventurous with my food than in the first two decades of life. But here at home, we’re still pretty conservative with our spice usage: salt, pepper, garlic, onion, basil, and seasoning salt.

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Here is the recipe for Deaton Beans: Bacon and Canned Green Beans. Cook the bacon. Drain most of the bacon grease. Cook/heat the green beans in remaining bacon grease. When of the green-bean liquid has cooked out, sprinkle the cooked bacon on top of the beans and serve. Deaton Beans are delicious.

But when a choir member gave us fresh green beans last week, my sister decided that we needed a special recipe. I can’t remember the exact recipe, but I know that it included bacon, garlic, basil, and…tarragon. When she told us that she had used tarragon, both my mom and I, completely independent of one another, said, “Tarragon?! We have tarragon?!” Dana’s beans were good—a nice experiment with spice—and evidently I like tarragon—but…well…they weren’t Deaton Beans.

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Here is the recipe for Deaton Carrots: Carrots, salt, pepper, butter, sugar, and basil. Boil the carrots to desired crunchi- or mushi-ness. Drain. Add salt, pepper, butter, sugar, and basil to taste.

Here is the recipe for Deaton Spinach: Frozen chopped spinach, salt, pepper, butter, and white vinegar. Cook the spinach according package directions. Add salt, pepper, butter, and vinegar to taste. We use approximately one lid-ful of vinegar.

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I cooked supper tonight. Sort of. A family friend brought us pork tenderloin, so I cooked the side-dishes. When it came time to prepare the carrots and spinach, I had a choice to make: Be adventurous and use something from the recesses of our spice cabinet—like tarragon—or stick to what we know.

Possibly boringly but comfortingly, I chose the latter.

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Sometimes, friends, it’s fun to be adventurous. Sometimes, truth be known, it’s necessary.
But sometimes, in the middle of a long run of stress, sticking to what we know is exactly what we need…and it is exactly what we needed tonight.