Pesto

When the day's news is about the depravity of humankind, I think that there cannot be a god.  But then there is pesto.  Surely the divine is at work here.

My basil had blight this year, so I lost a lot of my crop.  The new leaves were fine, but a day or two later, they too would succumb to the gray and the black.  Diligently picking off the diseased leaves helped a bit, but then I went to California, and when I came back, it was slim pickings for sure.

Nonetheless, I hand-picked what I could and ended up with enough basil leaves to make one batch of pesto.  The recipe is simple:  basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Throw it all in the food processor and let 'er rip.

I like to freeze my pesto in ice cube trays, then put two frozen cubes in each baggie, then put them all in a zip-lock freezer bag.  In a good year, I might freeze four batches of pesto cubes.  Sigh.

So last night, I made my one batch of pesto and froze it in the ice cube trays.  Today, I stored my little baggies of pesto in the freezer.  Basically, this means that there will be six evenings when I can add my pesto cubes to pasta and veggies.  Maybe I'll be stingy and only use one cube per saute.  So twelve evenings.  That sounds better.  Or maybe I'll just break down and go to the farmers market and BUY some basil to make more pesto.

I'll have to think about that.

I also froze garden peppers tonight.  I diced them according to color (don't judge!) and then filled baggies with red, green, yellow and orange squares.  I think there were twelve baggies full.

Pesto love almost makes winter seem bearable.