Home Preserving: Chocolate Mint

Ma had preserving food down to an art but I am still learning.

I have been re-reading my copy of The Little House Cookbook these past two weeks and chapter 4 talks about preserving foods on page 36. The options were: freezing, smoking, salting, and drying. The cookbook only gets into the drying method.



Before re-reading any of this book I decided to try and dry some of my herbs that keep coming in my weekly Abundant Harvest Organics produce box.

This past summer I turned a hanger upside down and slipped the hook into the rubber band that held a bunch of thyme together. I hung this outside in my sunny/breezy canyon backyard. It worked like a charm! I had freshly dried thyme! One mistake: I did not take it down and crumble it into a container after it was dried so it got over dried.

Now that is has been getting cooler I have been loving my morning cup of hot herbal tea. I ordered chocolate mint as an add on item to my weekly box and that same week mint happened to be the herb we got. I hung them both up outside to dry in hopes of using them to make tea. One problem: a big rainstorm hit the next day so they both got really soggy and then when they did dry out a few days later they just not seem right so I did not end up harvesting them for cooking.

I ordered a new bunch of chocolate mint as an add-on the next week and this time I hung it up in the garage. After a little over a week it was dried just right. I took it down and harvested it tonight.

The harvesting was a bit of a learning process too. At first I was crumbling it over the little bowl I intended to store it in but that was making a big mess and it was hard to hold the hanger up with one hand and crumble with the other hand. Then I got smart and hung it on the cupboard handles and placed a large bowl underneath. This way I could use both hands to crumble and it was all caught in the big bowl.

A lot of bigger stems fell into the bowl too and I picked most of these out but I wasn't too careful about it since I am only planning to use this for tea.

When I was done I had enough to almost fill a 1 1/2 cup container! The price of these fresh herbs was only $2 so this was a pretty good deal and it was easy and fun. Can't complain about that! I buy a lot of dried herbs as add on items from Abundant Harvest Organics but they usually cost $2 for a much smaller container (think of the little salsa to-go cups you get when you get take-out food).

After this success I think I will be buying more fresh herbs and drying them myself! Maybe one day I will even grown my own herbs and dry them. For now I am just happy to support my California farmers by buying their fresh grown herbs that are picked the day before they arrive at my door. I think Ma would be support that.