recommendation: dry your own herbs

remember that fabulous balcony garden i had this summer? well i was super bummed when I was packing up our house for our big move back to michigan and it dawned on me... what will become of my beloved plants? a few I was able to transport back home in the back of a car... my tomatoes, mint, eggplant and bell peppers. verrrry carefully. as for the herbs that were growing out of control in my planters - it just didn't seem worth the effort to replant them in pots to bring home. i couldn't bring myself to completely trash them so I decided to research the easiest ways to preserve them - freezing, infusing in oil, making pesto and freezing were all popular but I decided on drying since I had already packed up half my kitchen.

as for my beautiful basil - my sister plucked off bunches of it, rinsed, dried and transported it home so she could make pesto (see her recipe here)

my cilantro got pitched, it was really dried out from a hot summer

and...the thyme and oregano got dried! while I was taping up boxes, my sister cut bunches of each plant, tied them with knitting yarn and hung the bunches on hangers (p.s. the hanger is the most practical but how adorable is THIS?!). we let them hang for about 5 weeks (the original instructions I found online said 8-12 weeks but other websites said 5 days, 12 days, 2 weeks, etc., so I took them down when I noticed they were dry). This past week, I stripped

the dried leaves from the bunches and put them into labeled bags. the thyme gave about a 1/3 cup, the oregano gave about 1/2 cup. i'm so excited to use my dried herbs! its such a great feeling to have watched a plant grow right in front of you and to be able to use it for your meals, it made me feel very resourceful. i used my dried thyme (only 1/4 tsp) in my Smitten Kitchen tomato soup this week and it was delicious.

next summer i think i will try to plant a lot more herbs, now that I know I can actually do something with them at the end of the summer so that nothing gets wasted!