 Hi everyone, this is Chih-chou. Welcome to my channel and welcome to another food-related video Okay Now if you recall Back in September 2018, what we ended up doing was we put a video together Where I was showing you how I end up Jarring some mint that I end up basically harvesting during the summer, right? And right now we're in mid-June 2019, right? So we're about, you know, about eight months out or so since we put out that video So we went through and I showed you how I end up Harvesting some of the mint that I hang up to dry and stuff like that and then in December of 2018 We put out a video in the kitchen where I was showing you, you know Some of the recipes that I use the mint for, we made potatoes and we made some yogurt stuff Meets some other things as well, right? And throughout the cooking videos, the live streams that we're doing and other cooking videos that we've done I've used a lot of mint. So mint is a major ingredient that I end up using in My everyday really cooking, right? May it be just making mint tea or just sprinkling on some dried mint on potatoes, roasted potatoes I'm making or mixing mint in with yogurt or when cooking different types of meats and whatnot so I thought what we'd do in this video is take it back a notch and Basically go through hanging up the mint to dry and what I've done is I got my sort of Rope string set up here sort of the same string that I use to or the same set up anyway that I use That we had in the previous video when we were jarring the dried mint, right? And since we're in mid-June 2019 what we have right now is spring mint that I've harvested and Spring mint is absolutely Brilliant. It's it's phenomenal. It's like spring and nettle if you're able to Harvest some spring nettle You're good to go Basically you harvest spring nettle dry it up and you can use it for for teas and that's basically what I'm Going to do and we end up do harvesting nettle as well But what we're gonna do today is hang up these mints that I've picked about For about four days go or so, right? So I pick up these mints harvest them. Okay Bring them home wash them up and the way I wash them I put them into a big bowl and I use a few different bowls as a fair bit of mint here a few different bowls sprinkle on a little bit of salt and Fill it up with water and let it sit anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes, right because the salt basically Kills any of the bugs that might be on there and then I give the mints a rinse, right? So what I have here and they smell amazing, okay? What I have here is the mint all washed up and you can see it and what I do is after I wash up the mint I dry them in a little spinner thing and I have these rags these cloths that I basically only use well I only use for putting either Mainly usually herbs Mint parsley whatever herbs that we're buying and we're drying and we put them in these rags after you give them through the spinner you you know close them up and Usually if there isn't that much you just put the rag with a elastic bound around it in the fridge But if there's a fair bit of it you want to keep the moisture in there So what I end up doing is putting them in plastic bags as well and they keep pretty pretty nice, okay? so what we're going to do right now is Basically hang up the mint and let it dry and it's going to take You know it varies on the temperature right now. We're getting a heat wave. So hopefully they'll dry sooner rather than later Okay, but usually takes a two to Ten days two weeks up to three weeks to dry. So what I'm going to do I want to bring these out, okay? And let's put these guys here, and I'm going to open this up. So you see it and Since I've waited four days. I mean take a look at this some of the mint not that much Usually it's pretty good. I mean you can take a look at this, right? So it's all bunched up. It's fairly tight But sometimes if you let it sit too long the mint goes Let me pull this out So if you let it sit too long the mint goes black. So we're not going to dry up these ones. These ones stayed a little bit too wet So I'm going to take these black little ends. There isn't too much of it and You know compost these and if we see any more we'll take them off But there's a fair fair bit of mint here that we dried And it smells amazing by the way. It's Mint fresh mint is brilliant the smell of it dried mint as well when they're cooking it is really good Okay, and the way I usually end up hanging Arranging these things to hang them I bring a floss Okay, so I cut up a little floss. I take the mint the ends Right these guys and I put a whole bunch together And tie it up Okay, even the little guys. I mean, this is good. You're gonna try to suck her up, right? So we end up doing this Obviously anything that falls on the ground you don't hang up You got to be clean with your work right I don't even know if we have enough rope here to hang up all the Mints Okay, we should you make a bunch like this Lost another one. Whatever falls I end up Washing again is beautiful right Smells absolutely Fantastic again. This is This is spring mint spring mint is Is amazing right because it's freshly coming up and the leaves are in general Fairly They're not very thick Okay, the freshman coming up anyway. So I basically just take out a little floss Put that guy here And I wrap it around My stems like this take a look So I take this I usually put it down right You can do it like this as well Just wrap it around Tight because this is going to dry right so when it dries you don't want the The the stems to fall because they're going to lose a little bit of Volume on them, I guess you can call it right So we have this right how you can right Get it like that and all I do to hang these I sort of split it in the middle Like that and just hang it from the rope. So let's put these guys start off on this end Hopefully that's still in view it is it is So let's keep on going and what I have here is This is mint and I also have One of these guys is peppermint. So we're going to hang up the peppermint as well and both of these I harvested from here. I'm gonna Take a little bit of floss up right away That way we have our floss ready If I make the bunch a little too thick right and I harvest the stuff for my dad's garden Okay, I went and visited him and he had a whole bunch of mint and this is something Mint is something that our family has grown for Decades like for 40 years there hasn't been A place where we've moved to where it didn't have mint in the backyard We all we've always had mint growing because it's one of the staple foods That we end up using I'm gonna take a look at this I love harvesting spring and summer when you can Harvest your own food and prep your own food First of all because it's healthier, right? You can You know where the food is coming from Like this is as organic as it gets right Harvest it right like four days ago washed like three days ago and It's sort of been sitting in the fridge for a couple of days Okay And you do want to make it tight And I just tie it up Nuts, right? Not only is it healthy Not only is Harvesting your own food as long as you got a good supply healthy It also costs you nothing other than time really right and what are we using as material? a little bit of floss Which is like a couple of pennies Right and again, I'm just going to open it up Give it a nice gap and just let it sit like that, right? So let's do this I might be making these a little bit too thick, right? And the reason for that is is This is just one bunch and we got a Two more bunches to go through. This was the thickest one. So We should be able to Fit it all in. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to fit it all in. I might make the next few Bundles a little bit less thick so They dry faster Right and if we start running out of Rope string here to hang them up. I'll make the last few thicker And this is when you're hanging these things You usually want to hang them in a place where there isn't too much traffic because once these start drying If you have you know, you're bumping into them and stuff you're going to start losing the leaves It's going to start falling and stuff. So you don't want to do that. You want to sort of leave it alone and just Harvest when it's all nice and dry, right? That's nice. And this is something In spring and summer that I end up doing is foraging for food Picking berries making jam picking mint drying greens Everything and anything related to veggies. Anyway, fresh mint smell. So let's open this up And hang this guy too. I should have brought over the jars of mint Just to show you what it looks like after it's been drying, but If you want you can take a look at the video that we had. Here's another little bit of black I'm just going to take that because we ended up making I believe about six jars of dried mint the big jars And that was in September fall of 2018 and We're down to the last jar and a bit So basically in about eight months, what is it? September? October? October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June. So in nine months We went through All the jars except one So I ended up using a fair bit of mint in prepping food Because it's phenomenal. Really good for the tummy. Mint is That's thick enough. I don't think we're run out of space And then if we get the opportunity When the time comes When we're ready to jar these Maybe we'll do another jarring video. We'll see We'll see. I don't have too many other videos lined up to do. Make a space And you can eat these. And for those of you who are curious These are the Let's get another floss ready These are some of the Silver age romance comics that I had up previously in the previous video that you saw and We put out a video a while ago where I showed you guys The comic books that I was publishing back in the early 1990s As a comic book publisher And those are the comic books that you see up here All the ones that you see up here There's 14 comic books up there, I think. There's 7, 10 4, 7, 10 There's 13 comic books up there There's one that I haven't found I should have copies somewhere and And there's another one that was a trade paper back that we ended up publishing so There's a total of like 15 comic books that I ended up publishing in the early 1990s That was an amazing experience and those comic books that you see up there They're the comic books that I published That was a publisher. The artists were from Different parts of canada in the united states Wow, we'll talk about we've talked about these a little bit in the past in a couple of videos two or three videos We've put out But at some point I'll we'll do readings for them And take a look at them and I'll give you more info about them But today We hang up mint to dry And you want to leave space between them as well because you want air flow All right, you don't want to too compact That way You know, it won't dry as quickly anyway, so you do want to try them Give enough space between them roasted potatoes with mint in there dried mint just sprinkled on top and roast them together With a little bit of rosemary too Super delicious and we've made the roasted potatoes like that, right? nice nice You've got some randoms here. It's just absolutely brilliant harvesting your own food, right? You've got some randoms here bring the next I should I can just leave this like oh, no, it's okay Roll this up And then after I'm done with these took out the greens All I do is I go to the kitchen and just shake it out in the sink and just hang it to dry because You do want it to be dry so a little damp because of the Dement being there All right, and then you can just use them again. You can put them away after that You don't have to wash them every time, right? So that's really good. That's a fair bit We might take out the whole thing I think we will This room is going to smell amazing The aroma in this room is going to be phenomenal Because it's the mint drying, right? And you can dry other herbs This way as well other greens, right? Maybe not all other herbs amazing gift to people Take people some a jar of dried mint as a present Like I don't really buy presents I don't go shopping If I'm going to give presents to people this food Usually or comic books we need more space. I'm just going to shuffle things around a little bit and usually Well, you know when it's nicely dried because you want the stems to crack, right? The leaves dry faster than the stems But you do need the stems to dry If you're going to if you're going to harvest the stems as well, which I do right If you're just going to harvest the leaves you can just hang them up And once the leaves are dry you can harvest the leaves And then you can harvest the stems afterwards if you want, but that's a lot of work I usually keep them up until the stems crack when you fold them And by that time the leaves are totally dry I don't use all the stems, but in the teas I just like taking A few stems of teas and just I would take and fresh you can make freshman tea as well, right? But you just take this put in your teapot And you have freshman tea, right? And once it starts drying you'll lose a little bit when it falls down and stuff. So Not that much as long as you're not moving around In the area within the vicinity too much You're not going to lose too many to your ground That are just falling off Mint is funny. Look at this one It's a double that's where I cut it I had harvested it from the garden earlier as well So some of these where you see When you see plants splitting like this I had already cut this off. I was harvesting a little bit earlier Right, but then once you mint really likes being cut down, right? You cut it down it splits almost any plant that splits again, right? So you get more sort of exponential growth So initially when we got a little bit, I harvested a little bit And then let it grow a little bit more and I came back and Took down a lot so we can dry it When I hang up the rope here make the space To dry mint. I like to dry a fair bit in one shot That way we're set up. We've got a supply for a few months And definitely we'll harvest again Towards the end of the summer Because you do want mint comes back every year And since I use it all year round I don't want to run out of mint And in the stores you buy mint. It's very expensive Well, I don't know very expensive. It is expensive like Especially organic mint And it's just a weed that grows like mad, right? So if I can grow it Become, you know, being frugal is a good idea Manage your budget What we save on Harvesting mint, right? We spend on comic books maybe Or other foods That we can't harvest or grow And for those of you who are concerned about the lighting Um The light natural light doing damage to the comic books I have all of these comic books in Mylar Right, so it does protect from UV I know not completely But it does protect from UV. I've had these up for a while. I've had a lot of comic books up for a while On my walls over the years And they retain their color quite well. So the damage is Not Too traumatic These aren't These ones anyway, they're not You know, 9.8 grade or That level. So The comic books I published Even though I'm down to Not very many of them over the years or last 30 years of doing Since I've published them I do have a handful of copies of it. So And having them up makes me happy And that is part of collecting Showcase Showcasing this stuff, right and have some A green tea here that I'm drinking Green tea is really good and I do put mint Not always but a lot of time in the cuckoo I will put out a couple cuckoo videos. We're making Persian cuckoo with a green The Sort of the herb Dish that we make Let's put this up too. Nice. I've got a little room for the peppermint, right There's some more randoms. Let's eat the randoms Close this up. It smells spicier This makes amazing tea as well. Here, I'll show you the Difference in the leaves Not much different All right, the stems are different So this is the peppermint And this is the mint Let's eat these guys The stem on the peppermint is a little darker Okay, super delicious. Be careful eating greens. Sometimes they They're choking hazard. So talking and eating greens Sometimes you get a little bit tied to stuff tightly enough That one I'm going to rewash. We'll just eat those fresh So tie them tight. I have this one So this one we know is peppermint Let's pick up these guys It's this one that fell down. So this one hasn't fallen down This one I'm going to put Over here Because I'm going to rewash this because it fell on the ground, of course Right, let's put it like this And we're just going to eat those fresh Yeah, this one can't look here. We'll eat these ones fresh too. Didn't fall down, but we'll give it a wash Let's put that there. So we have more space. We're going to move things over a little bit Actually, let's put a little gap so we know which ones The mint and the peppermint. Do we have enough space? Should Maybe I'll make it tight just from the smell you can tell what's peppermint and mint And from the looks of it as well But when they dry, they you know, they look very similar The peppermint smells amazing. We'll put these over here. We'll eat those Give them a spin. We're going for two more basically And we're going to make two more here. A while ago, someone asked me if I would start sharing some videos on High end up, you know, prepping for the winter With food-wise and stuff and this is part of it All right, this is part of this thing here. That's I'm going to push it back in and we're going to have one more Bunch bundle, I guess We have some peppermint growing in our yard as well. So Once this batch is done, I might harvest some more peppermint from Our yard. We'll move these guys over so we can make the separation All right, so we got four bundles of peppermint and we got one two three four five Actually, let's count that again. One two three four five six seven Nine ten bundles of mint Okay That's High hang up the mint to dry We've got the video out where we harvested the dried mint Previously from september 2018 We have a video out where I showed you the type of you know Dishes that I end up using the mint for and there's a lot more than what's in that video as well Okay, and for sure. I'm pretty sure over the Summer we're going to tackle some more Food related videos may be in the kitchen doing some cooks or harvesting Food and prepping it for the winter or making jam or pastries or Whatever it might be. Okay Aside from that, I hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now