THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510060247
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
Enter Linda Xenakis' kitchen and the aroma of garlic, dill, tarragon, hot peppers and other enticing scents starts your mouth watering.
Walk around her Creeds home and you'll see it is filled with shipping boxes of vinegars, trays of drying herbs and big vessels of wine vinegar soaking up herbal flavors. The tantalizing smells follow you everywhere.
This fall, the mistress of Linda's Garden has taken the herbs she grows on her farm and brought them into her house.
For two years, Xenakis has been propagating, growing and selling herbs in Linda's Garden behind her home and now she's created a line of herb vinegars and dried herb blends from the fruits of her labor. In the process, she has turned a seasonal business into a year-round one.
Xenakis' clear garnet-colored Purple Basil Garlic Vinegar stands out alongside bottles of Rosemary Hot Pepper Vinegar with Christmas red peppers. A tarragon and a lemon vinegar, each with graceful sprigs of home-grown herbs, also await packing into boxes.
Jars of dark green dried herbs, exuding more wonderful aromas, are all in a row on the kitchen table. They are ready for an assembly-line mixing of special herbal blends that Xenakis also has created from the herbs that grow in Linda's Garden.
Her inspected kitchen has been her production room and the rest of the home, her warehouse. Over the past few months, Xenakis has produced and bottled 500 bottles of the vinegars. And she is mixing and packing 600 packets of six different herb blends, from Garlic Dip to Haberno, from Dill Dip to Cajun.
``It's been busy for me,'' she said. ``There are even boxes under my bed!''
Xenakis will be giving her vinegars and blends a trial run at the Virginia Beach Garden Club Fall Flower Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Virginia Beach Pavilion. She is selling vinegars for $6.50 and herb blends for $3.75 or three for $10. In addition she will have a selection of Linda's Garden perennial herbs (thyme, sage, etc.) annual herbs, like cilantro, that do well in the fall and others, like basil, that will grow well inside over the winter.
She'll also take samples of dips made up from her blends to the flower festival, so visitors can taste them. ``I want to see what people think of them,'' she said.
Xenakis won't be the only vender at the flower festival. You can also can find pansies, bulbs, perennials and native and dried plants as well as garden accessories. Programs include holiday centerpieces at 11:30 a.m., container gardens at 12:30 p.m. and topiaries at 2 p.m.
Xenakis sees her new venture as a way to keep the public interested in herbs year round. ``It's hard to sell herb plants in the fall,'' she said, ``but this is a way to generate interest. I want to open up people's eyes to herbs.''
To come up with recipes for her vinegars and blends, she did a lot of reading, tasting and testing. ``I take my blends to church and my husband takes them to work and I get opinions from the whole neighborhood.''
``I know what I like in a dip,'' she added ``and I have always liked dips.''
Xenakis' products are made the healthy way, too. There's no salt and no preservatives in any of her blends or vinegars. Her herbs are all grown organically and she orders from an organic supplier products, such as peppercorns, garlic and lemon peel, that she doesn't grow.
Xenakis has not only come up with her own mixture for the blends and vinegars, but she also created the recipes for dips and other uses of the blends. One or more recipes, such as cajun dipping sauce for shrimp or garlic baked potatoes comes on each package label.
``You can experiment with them,'' Xenakis said. ``Sprinkle them on salads or baked potatoes. Marinate chicken in oil and one of the vinegars. Sprinkle the tarragon vinegar on fish.''
Or just take a whiff and let your imagination do the rest.
P.S. PRINCESS ANNE COUNTY FAVORITES is the theme for the Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach Historical Society's fall benefit from 3 to 6 p.m. Oct. 15, at Upper Wolfsnare on Potters Road. Feast on crabcakes, corn bread, sweet potato pie and more. There will be cloggers, an antique farm equipment display and a pumpkin patch for the kids. Tickets are $15, $5 for children 6 to 10 and free for children under 6. Call 464-1022 or 340-8889.
BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, an exhibit of major storms along the Atlantic Coast, will be on display beginning Tuesday and continuing through Nov. 5 at the Life-Saving Museum of Virginia, 24th Street and Atlantic Avenue.
Call 422-1587.
A FULL MOON shines tonight. MEMO: What unusual nature have you seen this week? And what do you know about
Tidewater traditions and lore? Call me on INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter
category 2290. Or, send a computer message to my Internet address:
mbarrow(AT)infi.net. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY REID BARROW
Linda Xenakis is mixing and packing 600 packets of six different
herb blends, from Garlic Dip to Haberno, Dill Dip to Cajun.
by CNB