The summer garden season has mostly flown by, but our herbs are still going strong (even if the tomatoes are mostly gone). The exception to the plentiful herbs is our cilantro, which went to seed last month. I’ve got a second planting sprouting, and hopefully those plants will have time to produce before it gets too cold. I need to work on better timing with my succession plantings.

I usually make my vegetarian chili in the winter, using veggies from the grocery store, and dried herbs. After today’s garden inspection and harvest, I decided to give it a try with fresh herbs. It may be a little warm still for maximum appreciation of chili, but part of the traditionally huge batch gets frozen anyway, and I wanted to see how the fresh vs dried herb versions compare.

After sautéing lots of chopped assorted vegetables with plenty of garlic, I added canned kidney and black beans, stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce. I had picked a sizable basketful of basil (it’s been a great basil year), oregano and parsley, which nicely complemented the commercial chili powder and cumin. After simmering long enough for the flavors to meld, and adjusting the salt and cayenne pepper to taste, the consensus is, the fresh herbs make a different. Not that I won’t make full use of their dried counterparts this winter, but with plenty of fresh flavor available, it’s fun to flaunt it.

Being in the mood to play with my food, I decided on trying to put together a spinach lasagna for dinner. After looking over a few recipes, I had the basic idea, and acquired appropriate ingredients. I already had most of an overlarge container of baby spinach from the store (mine isn’t big enough to pick yet) which I used in place of the frozen spinach most recipes call for. I let the lasagna noodles cook in the sauce rather than boiling them first, since I’ve never tried that technique and had the extra oven time needed.

A dish like this, gives you plenty of leeway for herb-play. Our basil plants survived the move from inside to out, and that, with early offerings from the perennial oregano went into the sauce. The ricotta, parm. and mozzarella cheese mix got lots and lots of curley leaf parsley. Alternating layers, with sauce on both sides of the uncooked noodles, tightly covered, and into the oven at 375 for over an hour.

We were quite pleased with both the technique and the result. The herbs complimented the dish and helped define it. I’ve still got a half box of lasagna noodles left, and will experiment with different herbs and variations on the theme in the near future.

Another winter under the belt, and suddenly it’s springtime! Of course we did get a hard frost and a bit of snow a day ago, but that won’t hurt the early spring garden I’ve started, or the perennial herbs. So far it looks like we’ve got tarragon, oregano, sage, chives and parsley coming up. Those last two are already producing plentifully, so I used chives and parsley to perk up an old beef stew I got out of the freezer for dinner. Dried herbs (supplemented with ones grown inside under lights) were fine for the winter, but you just can’t beat walking outside and plucking fresh green flavors from the soil. Hooray for spring!