I use thyme in cooking including ices and cookies (lemon thyme cookies are wonderful!}Love fresh thyme mixed into dumpling dough for chicken and dumplings.

  I use basils in pesto and dry some for pizza and spaghetti sauce. My sage I will use in cooking poultry. Chives,both garlic and regular I use in cooking and garnishes..also love chive flowers in salads.

  OOoooo salads! Tarragon vinegarette,yum.Chicken with tarragon and white wine. Marinated mushrooms or asparagus (a blend of tarragon,garlic chives,lemon thyme,sea salt,balsamic and champagne vinegar with olive oil.

  Nasturtiums...lovely in salads.I like the leaves on whole wheat bread with cream cheese.

  Just found a recipe for lemongrass tea.

  Stevia to sweeten drinks. I need to learn how to bake with it.

  I use my mints and violets to candy so I can top my baked goods with a pretty. I also candy pansies.

  Got to start my parsley. I like the italian flat leaf...oh I could go on and on. As you see I use a lot of herbs in cooking and am just dipping my toe in using them as teas and medicines.

If I grow lavender, I make sachets out of the flowers, or I hang them above my bed to help me sleep. Sometimes I will steep the flowers in an oil and use that in a bath -- or I'll just put the flowers in the tub.

With mint, I steep the leaves to make tea -- after drying them. I might also use it to garnish ice tea, to garnish melon or to flavor water.

If I grow French tarragon, I typically use that to make chicken. I will dry it and use it all year long.

If I grow basil, I will dry some of it and use it in soups, when I cook roasts, to sprinkle on tomatoes, or to season Italian food. If I have a lot of it, I'll use it fresh and I'll make pesto. I will sometimes make a lot of it because it can be frozen. If I plan to freeze it, I don't add the Parmesan cheese. I add it after it's thawed and right before I plan to use it.

Peppers, I might dry and turn into a ristra.

I also take herbs and make a bouquet out of them and put them in a bottle filled with olive oil or vinegar. I then have flavored oil or vinegar. This makes a nice gift.

Susan, the Texas Yankee, the Texas Rangerette and the Assistant Administrator

SKBeal's Snazzy Tra

I love and use fresh herbs to cook, medicinal, ordered tea bags to make my own tea this past year...

I am starting my first real herb garden this year too.... not sure what exactly I am going to grow in it, but do plan to grow things I use often.... and dry or store fresh herbs from the garden to use durring the year.

In my warm climate I tend to grow a few tropical herbs that I use on a day to day basis. Some of the more unusual ones are, turmeric, vietnamese mint, thai basil and coriander, curry leaf plant, fish herb...which does really taste like fish...pandan leaf which gives a lovely flavour to fish or chicken when wrapped around it and then steamed or grilled, galangal, kaffir limes leaves,lemon grass and cardamom to name but a few. I use these often in all sorts of dishes including curries, grinding up all the fresh ingredients in a mortar and pestle gives off a lovely aroma. I have about 40 or so different types of herbs as I love experimenting with them. I mainly dry my leftover in bunches or in the case of ginger and turmeric etc. I mince them and put them in jars covered with olive oil where they keep very well.

 Great topic, Lyn! 

I use a lot of Cilantro, as we make our own Salsa and can it.  Chives in omelets and on baked potatoes, Sage for seasoning almost any meats, Dill for seasoning fish and for those ambitious years when we decide to can pickles.  I also grow a few different Basils and Oregano for cooking. 

Many herbs I grow for the bees and butterflies, and pretty blooms for me!...   Hyssop, Garlic Chives, Monarda, Lemon Balm, Creeping Thyme, and I'm working on getting Lavender to make it through our winters...LOL  Dried Catnip is fun to put in pouches for my friends cats.

This year I'm going to add more herbs to my flower beds.  The deer don't like them, and the scent from many herbs can deter them from eating other plants, especially Hyssop.     

~ Connie    ~ Zone 5    ~ MN 

I haven't tried sage tea or thyme tea but maybe I should. I'm always looking for more ways to use my herbs.

I use my different mints that I grow for my hot teas. And they taste yummy in the tea.

I use mine for cooking and medicinal both, Sage tea for a cough, thyme tea for a stuff nose, mint for tummy aches, I love cooking with my herbs as they are fresh and for the winter I dry them. also I sell my extra dyed herbs to folks my daughter works with.