I’ve been on a big preserving kick in the past couple weeks. I went to a “Preserving the Harvest” workshop put on by local farmer/food entrepreneur, Daniel from The Cutting Veg, and have since been inspired to freeze, jar and dry everything in season I can get my hands on. So far, I’ve frozen chopped garlic scapes and raspberries and canned strawberry jam (not very ‘fruitful’ since I tried to substitute honey for sugar…too runny…). As I write this, kale and sweet potato slices are drying in my dehydrator. Tip: dried kale is great on its own but I also tried rubbing the leaves down with olive oil and salt before dehydrating. They take on more of a ‘chip’ flavour that way and are delicious!

krispy kale...so I can get some green in the chilly white months

Dehydrated sweet potatoes...not actually a potato so they can be eaten raw

Not all dehydrating needs to happen in a dehydrator though. As soon as we get a few guaranteed consecutive days of sun and heat, I plan to try my hand at sun-drying outside. But given the humidity and rain as of late, I opted to confine experiments to my living room. In fact, I turned my living room into a bit of an ‘herb-op’.

My parents have a giant patch of mint at their place and offered to harvest a bunch for me to dry and put away for some winter tea. A bulging bag later, I was on a bus back to Toronto providing a refreshing aroma to my fellow travelers.  Everything is easier said than done when it comes to preserving, and I stayed up late that night washing each stalk and tying it onto a long string to hang up in my living room.

It’s mid-summer and most herbs will be well established by now, meaning you can harvest a good chunk of them and start a herb-op in your living room too without taking cutting down the whole plant. Just tie a few sprigs together and hang! Or, if you’re doing it leaf by leaf, take a needle and thread leaves together. The process will be faster if you do it outside on a sunny day but indoors with a bit more patience works just as well. You know they’re done when they will easily crumble in your hands. Leaving too much moisture in the leaves will just make it susceptible to mould.

Easily mistaken for a different kind of herb all together, a nose would set the record straight. I strung mint stalks together and laid them across a laundry rack in my warm sunny living room for a couple of days

To store, put your herbs away (pre-crumbled or whole) in an airtight container like a glass jar or tin. I may be biased, by I would avoid plastic since it can leach and should not be used for long term storage. If you are using the leaves for tea, you can do loose leaf or pre-pack them into tea bags which can be purchased at a health food store. If you’re super keen, you could even make your own tea bags by sewing together a fine mesh material. I’m not that ambitious.

Next up…DIY vegan “vice cream”! Now that’s the kind of ambition I’m talking about.