Young ladies proudly displaying baggie full of fresh pesto
This afternoon we had the distinct pleasure to work the young ladies at the Florence Crittenton home. While we’ve mostly been helping them in the garden this summer, today we took it to the kitchen!
Like many gardens this summer, the rains have prompted a huge basil crop on their grounds. But let’s face it, a little basil goes a long way, so what to do in the face of 4 feet tall mega bushes of this fragrant herb?
PESTO!!!
These girls whipped up their first batch of pesto within a few minutes, using the food processor to blend together garlic, Parmesan cheese, and heaps of freshly harvested basil leaves. Bind it all together with some olive oil, and you’ve got a snazzy sauce.
The girls slathered half of the sauce on fresh Italian bread for a treat that when toasted in the oven puts plain garlic bread to shame. The other half they put in a zip lock baggie to lay flat in the freezer. Throughout the winter, then, they’ll be able to break off chunks of the godly green sauce to mix with fresh pasta, bread, or even pizza!
In this season of overabundance of produce that many of us have grown tired of (can you stomach another cherry tomato?), we invite you to take a second look at how you can put these treasures up for the coming months when the bountiful garden is but a memory of the past!
By the way, for those avid pesto fans out there, we didn’t use any pine nuts in our recipe today, although it is traditional. We figured these little morsels would add some significant food miles to our final dish, and we were pleasantly surprised at how good it turned out despite their absence. For the hardcore locavores, though, be advised, we have made pesto with the local black walnuts with phenomenal results! Now if we could just find locally produced oil!
