on the corner of YUM & NOM: Dang it woman! You should be in the kitchen, making me a steak dinner; not talking to me, taking me away from the game, confusing me.

I tend to stay away from trying new recipes that call for fresh herbs because for the most part THEY SUCK. I don't mean that they don't taste good, they're just hard to prepare for. Especially recipes that call for small measurements of fresh herbs, like "a pinch" or "a dash" or "1/2 teaspoon". Because you can never buy just a pinch or a dash. Fresh herbs always come in a big bunch, or in a container. WHY?!?! Like, it doesn't take much to fill 1/2 a teaspoon of chopped herbs. You would just need a twig or two ...... What always happens to me is I would purchase a bunch of parsley and cilantro, use a few twigs of each and then the rest would rot away in my fridge! It drives me absolutely insane! I mean, at $0.99/ bunch (which is what Parsley and Cilantro usually cost), it's not expensive, but it's the fact that it's going to waste that bothers me. Wait, what? Since when did C develop a conscience about wasting food?!

A simple solution would be to just exclude those ingredients and not be fussy, I know. But I just feel that if I'm going to spend $10-$20 on everything else in a recipe, I might as well follow through and go the whole nine yards. And sometimes you just can't exclude an ingredient and compromise taste/flavour for convenience. Would you leave out the chocolate chips in a chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Anyway, I decided to plant my very own kitchen herb pot! I was inspired to do so after reading my friend's post on how she made Apple Thyme Martinis using fresh thyme from her herb pot!

So I stopped by Art Knapp on Friday after work and picked up a few things: potting soil, pots and herb plants. You can find all of the above at a local nursery or a big box including Home Depot or Home Hardware.

You can use any container or pot to grow your plants, you don't need anything fancy. You just have to make sure that it's at least 6 inches deep so that there's room for the roots to grow. Also, ensure that there's a hole at the bottom of your pot/container for drainage.

Say hello to Cilantro, Parsley and Mint! I chose these 3 variety to start off for several reasons: they don't grow too wide or tall and I use them quite often in my cooking. Except mint - I'm going to use mint solely for the purpose of making all variations of Mojitos!

Here they are, all planted! I basically put a couple of inches of soil into each pot then potted the plants and filled in the spaces with more soil. Make sure to pat the soil firmly into the pot so that you don't leave any air pockets. Otherwise, air pockets will dry out the roots! I left about an inch at the top of each pot so that when I water, displacement won't cause overflow.