mint: my new favorite herb

I have always liked mint tea, and in ice cream, hot chocolate and mojitos. Beyond that I had only rarely cooked or baked with it. This all changed last summer when I bought a bunch to sprinkle over a bowl of roasted chiogga beets. I love beets, but it this was a revelation, along the lines of my strawberry-basil epiphany. The mint provided a distinctive, refreshing flavor that when mixed with the beets didn't quite taste like mint, but was more amorphous. I think I had shied away from mint previously because I thought it would overwhelm anything mixed with it. What followed was roasted cherry tomatoes with mint, strawberry-rhubarb compote with mint, and a near requirement for mint with roasted beets. I've since been buying a bunch every month at the store, and am really hoping the seeds I planted pull through. I am thinking of making a fresh mint ice cream this summer. Oh, and a rhubarb ice cream.