You’ve seen the pics of our herb garden. (Check out this pic from when we first installed it on May 11th) And here’s how it looks just one month later…

And now you are probably wondering what the heck we are going to do with all these herbs? Good question!  No, we aren’t master chefs but we’ve enjoyed learning more about herbs this year thanks to a few helpful books. Believe it or not, the most helpful is a $1 find from a library book sale.

This book taught us how to make herb vinegars which we started today. Herb vinegars can be used in various ways for cooking, seasoning, and cleaning.

First we collected the following items:

1. White Vinegar
2. Apple Cider Vinegar  (You can also use a red vinegar if you want.)
3. Rubber Bands
4. Canning Jars
5. Plastic Wrap
6. Post-Its and a Pen for labeling
7. And Fresh Cut herbs: We started with lemon basil, lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, cinnamon basil and pineapple sage.

Sounds like a lot of work?  Not really! You start by washing your herbs and placing them in glass jars. Use a wooden spoon to bruise them. Then, you add whichever vinegar you want and fill the jar (Don’t be afraid to be creative with flavors!).  Using the wrap and rubber bands, cover each jar (Don’t use a metal lid because of the acidity).  Use post-its to label them so you don’t forget which herb is inside. Put the jars in a cool dark corner of your pantry and let them sit for two weeks.  Here’s how they will look:

After two weeks, you drain and bottle them, but I’ll save those details for Part 2!  See you in two weeks!