Holy Hotness.

Oh hello loves!

Are you all as hot as we were this weekend?  We just headed into town tonight after being at the lake all weekend.  Thank goodness we have an air conditioner in our room or I would have been one toasty pregnant woman!

Anywho, I promised a post about drying out basil.  We have been getting oodles of basil in our CSA box.  We also have lotsa basil growing in our garden and in planters on our deck.  And as much as I love pesto and fresh basil, it was getting a little overwhelming.  So we decided to dry our basil so that we can enjoy it throughout the winter.

Here’s the cool parts:
~It’s pretty inexpensive dried basil~

~It lets us have yummy basil throughout the whole year~

~It wasn’t too difficult~

So here’s a quick little walk-through of what we did…

{well after we searched the basement to find the food dehydrator we hadn’t busted out in months}

{oh and if you don't have a food dehydrator, there are ways to do this in the oven or microwave...just google it}

[1]

Pulled all the leaves off of the plants.

[2]

Spread them out on food dehydrator trays.

[3]

Turned the dehydrator on a super-low setting for hours and hours and hours.  Like 24 hours.  Fer real. 

[4]

Once all the leaves are dried out, we finally used the mortar and pestle JW bought me for Christmas to ‘mash’ up the dried leaves.

[5]

Then we put them in lovely little glass bottle to enjoy them for the rest of the year!  Hooray garden!!