The winter holiday season is a time for boughs of evergreen and beautiful aromatic foods in the air. One herb that meets both of these criteria is rosemary, and it is certainly a frequent component of Christmas dinners, as well as holiday sights and smells.
While most familiar with rosemary as a component of beloved holiday dishes like sage and rosemary stuffing, rosemary roasted potatoes, and rosemary gravy, rosemary’s role in the holidays needn’t stop there. It shouldn’t stop there.
It’s a beautiful plant with beautiful foliage with a beautiful bouquet. Surely, there is something a crafty Christmas crazy or holiday hipster can do with rosemary to make the season that much more sensational.
Of course, there is. There are more ways to use rosemary than simply cooking it! At least 10 of them, right?
1. Rosemary Wreath
As with just about all evergreens, a bough of rosemary fits snuggly into the holiday collection, and it works wonderfully in wreaths. A simple, slender wreath with rosemary can be wiring a few nice, long springs together into a circle. However, it’s realistic to cut several bunches of rosemary to make a full-on wreath for the door or above the mantle.
2. Rosemary Simmer Pot
The aroma of rosemary is very familiar, and it’s something that is both enticing and incredibly very good for us. An easy way to take advantage of this pleasant waft is to include sprigs of rosemary in a simmer pot so that it fills the house with a delicious smell even when Christmas Day dinner is still weeks away.
3. Tabletop Tree
As is the case with many culinary herbs, rosemary is relatively small and agreeable to growing in pots rather than in the ground. In fact, in colder US states, it’s a wonderful houseplant for indoors in the winter and outdoors in the summer. At Christmastime, this stunning evergreen can be trimmed to a tree shape and decorated with lights and little ornaments to make a tabletop tree.
4. Rosemary Stirrer
Christmas cocktails are a lot of fun, and the flavor combinations can span a huge spectrum. One eye-popping way to play with subtle touches of taste is to use fresh rosemary twigs as stirring sticks for suitable cocktails. It’s simple, exciting, and effective for providing a wow factor for holiday libations.
5. Centerpiece Displays
Even if the holiday dinner hasn’t remained a sit-down affair for many revelers, centerpieces for the table have stayed throughout the years as a much-appreciated decorative endeavor. A natural centerpiece of foraged items is all the better for it. Rosemary sets wonderfully with pinecones, nuts, winter berries, and so on.
6. Evergreen Garland
Garland is good, garland is great, and natural evergreen garland is the best of great. Rosemary is perfect for inclusion in garden creations because it has the right kind of color and shape, as well as a show-stopping scent.
7. Framed Rosemary Tree
For urban spaces where square footage is at a premium, standing a Christmas tree in the room doesn’t always jive with being able to move around unencumbered. In such a situation, the picture-framed rosemary tree is ideal. Take an empty picture frame (for the wall), create a tree sprouting from the bottom out of rosemary sprigs, and hang the Christmas tree on the wall.
8. Gift Toppers
It’s always a worthwhile effort to give simple things a special touch, and pinning a rosemary sprig to a gift tag is just the kind of extra effort that makes a gesture memorable. Why not spice things up?
9. Infused Oil
Whether given as a gift or used for dipping with dinner rolls, rosemary-infused oil is a perfect means of making the most of that rosemary shrub growing in the herb gardens. A few sprigs soaked in oil for a few weeks make a great flavored oil. It works as a homemade gift for foodie folk.
10. Rosemary Scrub/Bath Salts
A hot, relaxing bath is the perfect way to ward off a chilly winter’s workday, and homemade bath salts and DIY body scrubs are easy and inexpensive to make. Put them in a decorated (repurposed) glass jar, and they make a knock-out gift for soaking enthusiasts.
Rosemary is the right kind of plant, herb, foodstuff, and crafting material with which to get involved. It’s a real holiday asset, and it works pretty well for the rest of the year, too.
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