The Lovely Mina and her Lovely Herbs

Mina and I spent some time on the balcony today repotting a couple of our herb plants. Actually, she repotted, I watched, and thought about which herbs to use for dinner (I ended up using tarragon and sage).

Coming from Japan, and from a reasonably traditional Japanese family, Mina hadn't had much, if any, experience with herbs before we moved in together. Actually, I think she was pretty shocked at the number of spices, herbs, sauces, and other condiments that I collected for our kitchen. In Japan a kitchen with soy sauce, sugar, mirin, miso, and the makings for a good fish stock will do for most people, so having 4 kinds of mustard in the refrigerator is pretty much unheard of (yes, I have at least 4 kinds of mustard on hand at all times - smooth dijon, chunky dijon, Cleveland Stadium, and plain old yellow).

In any event, we're up to 10+ pots of herbs, with basil, marjoram, thyme, tarragon, sage, pineapple sage, chocolate mint, peppermint, lemongrass, cilantro, shiso, red shiso, and others in the collection. It makes me a happy cook to be able to step out on the balcony and grab some fresh herbs for almost anything I am making for dinner. Yum.

Thanks, Mina, for taking such good care of the herbs (and of me, ね)!