Dry Your Own Herbs

We planted our own herb garden last summer and it was to say the least, FABULOUS! It is about the size of an average flower garden and planted right by the house, on the side, so I can go snip some fresh herbs when I'm cooking. To be honest with you, if they were planted down by the garden I would probably not get as much use out of them, my laziness for going down there to cut herbs would kick in! SOOOOOooooo plant an herb garden, you won't regret it. If you have any questions on plants or what to do just email me!

This is our fresh flat leaf parsley, that I cut in December! Yes, it was still fresh and flourishing in December. I love it! I don't know if you can tell how big this pile was, but it barely fit in my arms.

This picture was taken a day after I dried them. I do own a dehydrator, but with all this parsley, I opted to dry it in the oven. I used two baking sheets and had 3 batches, so 6 sheets, and spread the parsley leaves evenly across the baking sheet. You want to make sure and snip the leaves from the stems before drying, it will make your life easier! I just use kitchen shears and snip snip, you can leave an inch or so of stem, that won't hurt, you just don't want the big stems in there.

Next fill your food processor, or if you don't have one you could crumble the parsley with your fingers. This is just much quicker.

Then it grinds it down to next to nothing! Just kidding, with the amount I had, I'll be giving parsley away!

*Tip, you want to let the parsley that is dried, sit out in a bowl covered with a paper towel for a day or two to make sure it is 100% dried. You don't want to jar any parsley that still has moisture, then you'll have moldy parsley. I'm sure your spaghetti won't appreciate moldy parsley!