Saturday, June 18, 2011

Making a Purple Basil Sauce (pesto?) from on-hand ingredients

At the first conway farmer's market of the season, we purchased a purple basil seedling. It was so petite and pretty. We separated it into 3 plants and potted them. One we gave away, the other two we set in sunny/shady spots. They have been doing wonderful!

Well, they started to flower and I realized I have not been harvesting. Therefore, this morning I pinched off the flowers, lower leaves and a couple of stems from both Purple Basil plants. I was not sure how to store them or what to do with them.

While looking up articles on storing fresh basil, I stumbled across a recipe for Purple Basil Pesto from this website I said hmph. I like pesto. I don't have that ingredient. I almost moved on. In fact, I did move on to another site, but then decided let's see what happens.

I created my own version of the above clickable recipe from ingredients that were already at home.

Ingredients:
pecans- freshly shelled (not roasted) about 3/4 cup
purple basil - freshly harvested (stems, leaves, flowers) (about 4 ounces)
2 cherry tomatoes - freshly picked perfectly ripe sweet 100 tomatoes
Grated Parmesan Cheese - the remainder of what was in container (6 tablespoons)
Garlic - 2 cloves (I couldn't taste it so I sprinkled on just a touch of Garlic Salt)
olive oil (for desired consistency-I used all of my olive oil and added canola oil)

Place all ingredients in food processor. I did not pre-cut or crush anything, you could if you want, but you don't have too. I scraped the sides a couple of times to make sure everything was good to go, I ended up pulling out one stem that refused to be a part of the party. When satisfied with your food processor's work. Add oil till pesto preference is achieved.

Enjoy! I am going to have mine on noodles and vegetables. I might even bake some on some chicken breast.

ps. If you don't have a food processor, you can chop all ingredients and use a mortar to mix.




Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Where I can remember I've been...


visited 17 states (34%)
Create your own visited map of The United States



There's alot of places I'd love to go. Every state in the United States. A few choice places in along the Amazon River, Costa Rica, Galapagos Islands, Kenya, Ireland..actually all of the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Israel, Greece and I'd like to tour some of the world's oceans. Is that too much to ask?