Soft and Hard Herbs

I'm not a gardener by any means, so this information from Ruhlman was new to me:

Herbs are roughly divided into two categories, “hard” and “soft.” The soft herbs are herbs with soft stems, such as parsley and tarragon. The soft herbs are best used fresh; they’re fine dried, but they lose their magic, all the beguiling qualities that make them so powerful a la minute.

The hard herbs, those herbs that when allowed to grow develop tough woody stems, are fabulous dried. The best as far as I’m concerned is thyme, also one of my favorites fresh. Oregano and marjoram are excellent as is sage, which I have a forest of now.

Kind of intuitive I guess, but good to know. Unfortunately We were negligent this year with our window herb garden, forgetting to start it until it was too late to be worth it... but we don't get enough sunlight for excess herbs to really be an issue. Next year we'll hopefully go through with the plan to mount our window boxes on the railing of the fire escape... thus exposing them to a bit more time of direct sunlight... to theoretically grow a little better.