Do you use your freezer to preserve herbs, vegetables, or fruit? The freezer can be a powerful, overlooked method of preserving. I wrote an article for Vegetarian Times that appears this month in the July/August issue, all about preserving the good foods of summer by using the freezer. Pesto, peach puree, tomato soup — stash them away now for the winter! One of my favorite ingredients, a handful of fresh herbs from the garden, is one of the simplest things to preserve in the freezer, and I just learned a new, better way to freeze herbs: In oil! More

I peeked into one of the restaurants at the Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem earlier this week, and saw these pretty centerpiece tableaus on each individual table: a variety of herbs —sage, parsley, basil, and more—offered in lieu of flowers, and potted instead of snipped and stuffed in a vase. More

Many are skeptical when faced with a recipe calling for lavender, and rightly so! Too much of this fragrant purple herb will leave your dish tasting, horribly and unrelentingly, like a bar of soap. But if you hit it just right, that soft and ethereal lavender flavor is a beautiful thing. Do you ever cook with lavender? More

A little while back during Reader Request Week, we had several folks ask about herbs. "How should I be pruning them?" "How do I plant them?" "How can I get the most out of them so there's plenty to cook with?" We went straight to the source with Tara Heibel from Sprout Home in Chicago to get our facts straight. Here's a video from Tara speaking directly to you, our Kitchn readers, with her best tips on getting the most out of your herbs.
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We recently posted about chive blossoms, but I would like to put in a good word for chives themselves. This green, mildly onion-like herb is almost always in my kitchen and whenever I have a bit of dirt nearby, it's one of the first herbs I plant. Milder than green onions, chives add a hint of onion flavor without being overpowering. They make a perfect summer herb, as they're best raw or only slightly cooked, but of course they make a fine garnish for winter dishes as well. More

Why use an ordinary basting brush when you could make your own out of herbs? It looks pretty and adds flavor! More

It's official. Our basil is finally growing beyond its little planter, and there's enough to harvest to turn into pesto. Instead of celebrating, mild anxiety kicked in: this has to be the very best pesto of all time. We don't have much of our own basil to go around, so we have to really knock it out of the park on this one. More

I spent the Memorial Day weekend with my friend Joe Yonan up in Maine where he is taking a year off from his role as Food and Travel editor of The Washington Post to work on a book about vegetables and live on his sister and brother-in-law's homestead. He's growing his own produce, fetching eggs in the morning from his small gaggle of hens, and living as much as possible off the land.

With some gardening experience in my past, I volunteered to venture north and help with some homesteading chores. The very first challenge posed to me was by Joe's sister. She took me out to the garden, pointed at a tall stalky plant I knew to be lovage, and said, "What should we do about this thing?" More

Cilantro: you love it or you hate it. However, a new study finds it may not be as simple as that. This study, conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto, found that cilantro aversion varies dramatically between ethnic groups, and could have a genetic component. More

Herbs are confusing. Or maybe it's the recipes that are confusing. If a recipe calls for a quarter cup of minced parsley, how much of the bunch will you need to pull from the fridge? How tightly should you pack the measuring cup? Let's discuss. More