Fresh thyme keeps somewhat longer. There is a large supply of fresh thyme on the left side of the driveway, the stuff hanging over the wall with the small flowers. You can take a few pieces of it, tie a string around the thicker end of the bunch, and hang it in the kitchen for a few days to let it dry out, or use it right away.
Fresh herbs like basil, oregano and thyme need to be washed off before using them. Just run a little water over them in the kitchen sink. You can pat them dry with a paper towel. They don't have to be perfectly dry, just mostly.
To get the leaves off and throw out the stems, you can hold one of the stems and pull it through your fingers, like you were pulling a piece of curly ribbon through them to straighten it. Hey, it's quicker than picking the leaves off one at a time.
When you chop fresh herbs, you can chop them as fine as your palate likes. I cut the leaves into about quarters, not one at a time of course but by making a little pile and doing a bunch at once. Alternatively you can use a large knife and the sort of rapid-fire chopping tecnique you see on tv sometimes (if you're not sure what this is, ask someone to show you or wait til my next visit). If you want them to be really finely chopped there is always the food processor.
Garlic heads keep up to a month. Longer and that, and you should check them. If you peel a clove and the center part is soft, light colored and fragrant, it is good. If it is hard and brownish, it is too old. The best way to keep garlic is in a hanging mesh basket, but if you don't have one of those, you can keep it in a little bowl on the counter or a shelf.
Spices do get weaker with age, so after a year you will find that your spices have much less flavor than they had. But by then you will have used them up and bought new bottles :-)
Mushrooms will keep in the refrigerator for about a week. Keep them in a container with saran wrap or they will dry out and shrivel up.
To clean them, use a slightly damp paper towel to rub the dirt off. Too much water and they get soggy; too little and you don't get the dirt off but wind up peeling off the outer skin of the mushroom.
When you chop mushrooms, if the stem doesn't come clean you can cut it off and throw it out. Also if it has gotten a little soggy in the meantime, throw it out.
Onions keep for a couple of weeks and sometimes longer. They keep best in one of those mesh baskets; get one with the several levels and you can use the large one for potatoes, the middle one for onions, and the small one for garlic. When onions go bad they will go bad from the bottom if they are sitting on the counter, and they will start to smell bad too. Throw the bad ones right away or they will contaminate their neighbors. If an onion starts to grow green from the top, you have three choices:
When I chop an onion, I use this cheesy technique of cutting off each end, cutting it in round slices crosswise, and then taking a couple of these slices at a time stacked on each other and cutting them across the diameter in a bunch of directions like dividing up a pizza. Then I split up the pieces in each wedge with my fingers; they are held together with some sort of thin membrane.
Hey, I told you it was cheesy. But it works for me.
Right after chopping the onion(s), go run your hands under cold water to stop your eyes from running. It helps right away.
Eggplants will keep in the refrigerator for about a week. If you are unsure, see if it's soggy. If it isn't you are in luck.