A Little Love for Chocolate Mint - Guest Post by Jenna Petersen

Hello, VegetableFreak community! I hope to be able to give you some tips for incorporating fresh herbs into your cooking, since my Dad affectionately calls me the “herb expert” of the family. I wasn’t always such a foliage specialist, but I do remember the day that I wandered over to Dad and found him picking something green and incredibly fragrant in the field. I quickly learned that this was an herb called basil, and that if I wanted to join him in picking it, I needed to carefully pinch off the leaves to avoid bruising them. This was the beginning of a long relationship of herb cultivation that has only flourished in recent years. While basil remains a staple in our garden and at our Farmer’s Market booth, we have added a variety of other culinary plants. These include parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and many others, one being mint. We sell seven (!) varieties of it as plants: Spearmint, Peppermint, Mint Julep, Mojito Mint, Orange Mint, Chocolate Mint, and Pineapple Mint. Of these, my favorite by far is Chocolate Mint. It has a unique taste, beautiful purple stem, and smooth leaves. Compared to the typical spearmint, I think it has a cooler, stronger taste. It also grows vigorously, a stereotypical trait of most mints. Chocolate mint is amazing, and I have a few suggestions for using this tasty plant.