Reap What You Sow: Basil into Pesto

I've blogged about my garden adventures a little bit before.

This year, I haven't actually written any posts about it, but my garden is looking bee-yoo-tee-ful!

We came home from camp to sprouting and flowering and bursting....thanks, Grandma, for the great watering help!

Yesterday, I harvested 8 cups of basil. Sam and Yael helped me pull all those leaves off the stalks:

Of course, we made a caprese salad...doesn't it look amazing? We don't have any ripe tomatoes yet (it was a slow start) but the fresh basil made up for the store-bought tomatoes. Mmmm....

I noted as we were taking this picture that I should have used a different color plate for better photographing...

And with the rest, I made pesto. Gobs and gobs of beautiful, delicious, amazing pesto.
Basically, I followed a few recipes but here's what I did:
about 4 cups of basil (washed well), handful of walnuts (no pine nuts in the house), about a 1/2 cup of olive oil, a lot of garlic, salt and pepper...whizzed together in the food processor until perfect, then added about 1/2 a cup of shredded parmesan cheese and mixed once more...then voila, delicious.

I decided to freeze most of it in cubes. Since I have an automatic ice-maker, I had once upon a time bought ice cube trays for a project. Yes, they're heart shaped. No, it doesn't really matter!

And now I have a whole big bag full of pesto cubes just waiting to garnish food, drop into soups and sauces, spread on toast....yum!

What's your favorite thing to do with the produce of your garden?