“Herb”-ivore Month – What’s the Dilly Yo?

Finally, an opportunity to use that phrase without the imminent embarrassment of sounding like I’m somebody’s mom trying to sound cool and/or young and hip. Although a) I’m about 20 years too late for “What’s the Dilly Yo?” to be used by anybody even 5 seconds younger than I am and b) Who am I kidding? I still sound ridiculous trying to use slang. I should’ve just completely embraced that and instead labelled this post (*said in stilted mom/dad voice*) “And what is it that is the Dilly (*long pause*) You?” (and no, that “you” was not a typo, it just seemed like the kind of thing a lame-o like me would say. Plus, then it just sounds like I’m intentionally being ironic and of course I know how it’s really supposed to be said 😉 ).

For this week’s herb-based confection, I’m obviously incorporating dill. This is the first week where I finally went out on a limb and decided to not make an herb combination that’s already known to be a match made in heaven. I love dill and we all already know how delicious it is when combined with chips and popcorn and other such snackery foods (and if you don’t find such things delicious you need to leave my presence right now. Seriously. I’m waiting *tapping foot impatiently*. Ok, now that we’ve reduced our numbers to only those who have at least a modicum of common sense and taste, I will move on to my romanticizing of the herb that is dill).

First off, it’s no coincidence that dill has the name that it does. It’s pretty obvious to me what happened here. One day, a farmer was out in his herb garden, and shoved a handful of dill into his pie hole, and was trying to communicate that it was delicious, but wasn’t willing to stop chewing enough to get the whole word out. Trust me, it’s historically accurate. Look it up if you don’t believe me (actually, can you go ahead and just believe me and not look it up? That would be great 😉 ). Being the in-depth researcher that I am, I actually just did look up the etymology of this one, and according to Wikipedia “”Dill” is a Germanic word whose origin is unknown”…so, my version really could be true. Told you so 😉 .

I know, I know, I’m taking a really long time to get to the point here. Basically, I was considering my own experiences with dill in the savoury world, and thought that orange and dill would be a great combination. They both scream summer vibrance (both in appearance and taste), so I thought what could be better? I was pretty nervous about this one, but, as usual, I figured go big or go home right? This recipe is essentially a riff on my “healthy-ish” sunflower seed butter fudge from a while back, but I switched out the homemade sunflower seed butter for homemade cashew butter and added in the dill and orange zest. Then, to really bring the dill home, I topped it with dill-infused sugar.

Being too scared to taste it myself, once these had chilled sufficiently in the fridge, I cut them into super miniscule size bites and forced Kevin to have the first one. As if I were watching a horror movie I covered my eyes with my hands (still peeking at him through my fingers though – why do I always do that? Do I really think this is going to protect my brain from being impacted by scary images? The answer to that is…yes I do). Even Kevin had a look of trepidation on his face before eating it (although who could blame him when confronted with me acting as though these were to be his last moments on earth?) but as he started chewing his face began to look more and more “dill”-ighted. To make sure he wasn’t just trying to trick me, at this point I deemed it necessary to try it for myself. My verdict? These were actually surprisingly good, the dill sugar was kind of a stroke of genius on my part, it added a nice little bit of crunchiness, and the orange and dill flavours balanced each other out really nicely.

So far my herbery concoctions have turned out surprisingly well. Will next week prove my downfall, or will it be the greatest recipe to date? (or possibly middling in both taste and creativity…who knows?) Stay tuned next week to find out the thrilling conclusion of “Herb”-ivore Month. Feel free to host your own herbed theme party in anticipation 😉 .