Drying and Storing Herbs

If you haven’t been drying and storing herbs for use all winter long, you still have time!  Now’s the time to start, while herbs are still putting out new leaves (although barely) and it’s not cold enough out to damage them. (At this point, I’d hurry and cut some herbs to dry now.  As in, right now.  What are you waiting for?!)

I hang my fresh-cut herbs from the beam that divides my kitchen and family room.  I usually cut such large branches branches that I don’t need bundle them, but smaller branches can be loosely bound together with some jute twine for easy hanging.  The idea is to hang them in a dry place that has good ventilation, away from direct sunlight.  Note: It is not necessary to wash your herbs first, unless they are visibly dirty.

Once completely dry (it can take a few weeks), store the dried herbs in any kind of resalable container.  I like mason jars, but since I’m a spice-dropper (okay, I'm an everything-in-the-kitchen dropper), I use plastic containers, like Gladware or even Ziplock plastic bags.  This year I tried Ball freezer jars (for jam), which have screw-on plastic tops and are BPA free.  These seem like they’ll do a much better job of keeping my herbs fresh.  Or, fresh-er, since they’ll never be as fresh as they were the day I picked them from the garden.

I don’t know about you, but I love reaching into my spice cabinet during the winter months and pulling out herbs that I grew and dried myself.  I remember growing the plants and feel proud that I'm using what I've grown.  Drying my own herbs is resourceful and self-sufficient, easy to do and just tastes better.  There’s no good reason not to dry your own!

Jewels of Summer

July is my favorite summer month. Not because of the fireworks and festivities and excuses to overindulge, but because of these little jewels:

When I think about summer, I think of raspberries, the ones that grow in the wild on the farm.  To be precise, they’re not actually raspberries, but wineberries, an invasive species from Asia.  And according to Wikipedia, a wineberry isn’t even a berry at all—it’s “an aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets around a central core.” Hah!  But I digress.  I’ll just call them raspberries for now.

These little berries are so deliciously sweet and tart all at once—picking them (and eating as many as I can get my hands on) has been a personal tradition for me for years, something I always look forward to doing.  But this year is different, because I made jam.

It was my first-ever attempt at jam, and the first time I had canned since 2007.  I enjoyed the process, and I was glad to get the cobwebs out of my head around the canning process.  I refreshed my memory and used the raspberry jam recipe in the Big Book of Preserving the Harvest.  The jam didn’t set quite as firmly as I had hoped, but maybe that’s because they aren’t actually raspberries.  Or maybe I just didn’t simmer them long enough.

Either way, Nathan and I are enjoying picking and eating these juicy jewels every day on our walks—sometimes twice a day!—and I’m grateful for every day and walk with my son and every berry we toss down our gullets.  They taste best plucked right from the bush, still warm from the sun and hot, humid air.  It’s not every day that we get to eat such delightful, beautiful jewels of summer…Oh, how I cherish July.