I have a lovely herb garden to supplement my love of cooking.  There is a big giant bush that is my oregano.  Need any?  I’ve got some chives to spare, too!  The bees love the blooming flowers on the oregano and chives.  They are so laden down with pollen they can hardly fly!

I found some links for freezing herbs, so I’m going to try that this year.  Come January I’m bemoning the fact that I have no fresh herbs and the ones at the grocery store are insanely expensive and don’t keep very well.  I worked on that these past few weeks before my garden gets nailed by the frost.  It’s not like I don’t have a whole lot of herbs.  I just need to battle the honey bees for access to them!  Seriously, they were flying all around me while I was harvesting my herbs.  They only “buzzed” me a few times when I got to close too their precious flowers.  No stings…lucky me!

This year my herb garden consisted of:

Oregano  (perennial)
Chives   (perennial)
Thyme    (perennial)
Sage     (perennial)
French Tarragon  (just planted this year – hopefully a perrenial.  It looked pretty paltry this year, though.)
Mint     (perrenial – just planted this year and I heard it can be invasive)
Parsely  (annual)
Basil – 2 varieties (annual)
Cilantro (annual – had to plant twice to have enough all summer)

There are several ways that you can freeze your herbs.

1.  Water-based cubes – Harvest, clean and chop up your herbs.  Place in ice cube tray with enough water to make it submersed and all wet.  When frozen place in a marked baggie.  (Best for drier herbs – thyme, rosemary, tarragon, cilantro)

2.  Oil-based cubes – Harvest, clean and take 2 cups of packed leaves and put in a blender with 1/4-1/2 cup olive oil.  I tried my big blender but that didn’t work so well.  I used my hand blender with the little enclosed blender attachment.  That worked much better.  You are trying to make it into a paste to go into an ice cube tray.  When frozen place in a marked baggie.  (Best for herbs with more water: basil, oregano, parsley, sage)

3.  Whole leaves – Harvest, clean and leave them whole.  Place leaves on jelly roll pan and flash freeze.  When frozen, place in marked baggies. (This works for most of them – I did it with my chives)

To use them, the cubes you can pretty much just drop in stews and sauces.  The whole frozen leaves you need to thaw and chop.

I was going to have a picture of them all frozen, but I didn’t get it done.  Just image a frozen cube of green, and that’s what it looks like. 🙂  I’m all ready for winter!