This summer, while shopping at the Trout Lake Farmer’s market, I came across a rare find–a sack full of fresh Lemon Verbena for only $4! I have tried growing lemon verbena on two occasions now, but both times they haven’t made it through the winter–or that’s what I thought. The woman who sold me this delectable herb told me that it does fine if you have a garage to overwinter it, which I don’t at the moment. She also told me that it dies down in the winter but will grow again in the spring–so unfortunately it seems I thought my plants were dead when they were just hibernating.

Lemon Verbena is very good for digestion and for relaxation. The first time I came across this herb was in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco. I was doing a study abroad program there while in college, studying the food preparation rituals as well as the language and culture of Morocco. Part of our program included a week in a Berber village in the mountains. We first took a truck into the mountains, from there we were split up into pairs and taken to a different villages.