We are enjoying a spectacular summer, one like we haven't seen in many, many years: every morning we are welcomed by deep blue sky, and the weather is nice and hot and much drier than most years. But we've had two dramatic end-of-summer-style thunderstorms in the last few weeks, and while we still enjoy having our dinner outdoors or on the terrace, it's time to start thinking about the fall approaching.
This horrendous tangle of vegetation is my dried rosemary and sage. Only the leaves get used, and although technically herbs should be dried in bunches, hanging neatly upside down by the branches, I don't do it when I dry herbs for their leaves, and when the branches are thick and woody like sage and rosemary (same applies to thyme, if you like it dry). I don't have the space to hang them, nor have I noticed any real benefit in doing so, except of course aesthetically. So I just drape them over the only available space we have, our firewood pile, which sits idle in summertime: the perfect spot for drying many of my herbs, which I pick around May, just before they flower. They've been drying for a few months by now, and are ready to be stripped off the branches, ground up, stored, and then used to flavor our winter food. Just in time for the woodpile to return to action!
I do handle the herbs that I'm going to use for their flowers a bit more delicately, though: I dry the lavender (I posted photos here) and oregano in bunches upside down, and pluck chamomile flowers off their stems first.
The chamomile doesn't come from my garden. Five years ago, the boys and I went for a walk with my elderly neighbor to look for wild chamomile plants. We found several, pulled them up gently and transplanted them in our gardens. Sadly, my plants didn't survive, but my neighbor's have been thriving ever since, and she kindly lets me pick some of the flowers every year. I use dry chamomile for its medicinal properties and for bedtime teas.
This year I also remembered not to throw away the apricot stones left over from my jam making, and I let them dry, too. When you crack them open, there's a seed inside that looks like a small almond, and tastes like an almond, too, though more bitter. In Italy these are used to flavor Amaretto and amaretti traditional liqueur and cookies (their names come from amaro, which means "bitter").
I'll use them to make a custardy New Year's Eve dessert which my neighbor always makes, a mid-winter treat flavored with the seeds of summer to welcome the New Year.
