Basil Pesto

What does summer taste like? 

PESTO! Bright, nutty, herbaceous, and full of flavor. 

Fortunately, pesto is delicious both when you first make it and also freezes beautifully for months when well-sealed, so you can enjoy it long after summer is over. You'll thank yourself on some cold dark December day when you're feeling uninspired about making dinner.

Follow these simple instructions and feel free adapt it to suit your tastes and dietary needs. The only musts are oil, basil, and salt although I'd make a strong case for garlic. You can make it without nuts and/or without cheese with excellent results. 

Things you can play around with:

• Type of nuts - pine nuts, roasted cashews, walnuts, roasted almonds are all options.
• Herbs - carrot tops make a delicious pesto, ditto cilantro, and you can add parsley, too. Adding some wild ramp leaves or garlic mustard greens also gives pesto a different flavor and zip when those are in season.

I like to make a batch without nuts and a batch without cheese to freeze so I can accomodate those who can't eat nuts or dairy. To keep them straight in my freezer, I label the dairy-free batch Pesto Daniel in honor of a family member who can't eat dairy and the nut-free batch Pesto Luca in honor of our son's friend who has a nut allergy. 

Here is a quick video showing my process (speeded up a bit!)

If you're feeling fancy, feel free to grind this all by hand in a mortar and pestle but as I am usually short on time and also dealing with a huge amount of basil to process, the food processor is my tool of choice.

-- print recipe --

Basil Pesto
Makes 2/3 cup

Ingredients

• 2 cups (packed) fresh basil leaves, washed and dried thoroughly
• 1 clove of garlic , peeled and chopped
• 1/4 cup pinenuts
• 1/4 cup parmesan or romano cheese, grated (optional)
• 1/3 cup 4xtra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt to taste

Directions

1. Place the basil leaves, pine nuts, garlic and cheese in the bowl of a cuisinart or other food processor and add the salt.
2. Turn the food processor on and add the olive oil in a steady stream. Blend/process until smooth or to desired consistency.
3. Taste the pesto and adjust the salt as needed. Transfer to an air tight jar or container with a tight lid and top with olive oil to slow oxidation, preserving that bright green color.
4. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to two weeks or in the freezer for several months. The top of the pesto will turn brown as it oxidizes but it is still good and if you dig down below the top, the rest should still be that lovely brilliant green.

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Make Marigold Chains to Bring Summer Indoors All Year Long

For anyone with a vegetable garden, planting marigolds is a win-win. Not only can you enjoy brilliantly yellow and/or orange blooms for months, the pungent oil in their leaves act as a natural pest deterrent, repelling insects like aphids and whiteflies, and their root systems suppress harmful root-knot nematodes. Plus they attract pollinators. They're an ideal companion plant to tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, basil, and peppers.

One year, I had such a riot of these sunny blooms that I decided to try preserving them in a marigold flower chain like the ones used to decorate Day of the Dead ofrendas in Mexico and to bedeck brides and grooms in South Asian wedding ceremonies. 

I got my boys to help me and we sat out on the picnic table with our needles, gently spearing flower after flower on two long lengths of thread.

When we'd strung all the flowers, we hung the garlands up to dry inside. They brought a little much-needed light into our home during the dark months of winter for a full two years before I finally took them down and laid them to rest in the compost. It was fun for the whole family and well worth the effort.

Materials: You will need shears or sharp scissors to snip the flowers off their plants, a strong needle, and some sturdy thread. 

1. Pick the flowers. Cut only good-sized flowers that are in the prime of health.
2. Prep the flowers. Use your scissors or shears to snip off the stems right at the base of the flower.
3. String the flowers. Tie a large knot at the bottom of your thread (you can also use a bead to anchor it all if you like) and thread the other end through your needle. Pierce the needle through the middle of the green bottom of the flower head (the base) and bring it out through the top.
4. Slide and repeat. Slide the flower down to the knot and continue adding blooms until the chain is your desired length
5. Finish. Tie a loop on both ends so you can easily hang your finished garland over doorways or on walls.
6. Hang up & enjoy! Hang the garland up somewhere dry that does not get a lot of direct sunlight where people can ooh and aah over it.

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Make a Lavender Wand -  a Step-by-Step Tutorial

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How to Make Lavender Wands from Flesh Flowers, a Step-By-Step DIY Tutorial

A few years back, my co-workers gifted me three lavender plants that I nestled in a sunny area of our yard. Although it took them a few years to get established, the plants hit their stride last summer and began putting out beautiful, fragrant spikes of flowers in the early summer and again in the fall.

Last year, I harvested them and hung them up to dry, thinking that I'd have pretty bundles to give away in the winter. But when I took the bundles down, I discovered that they were verrrry delicate and the flowers dropped their buds at the slightest touch. The bunches do look pretty but they're quite messy, making them a less than ideal way to enjoy the flowers.

This summer, I decided to try out another option to preserve and enjoy these fragrant blooms—lavender wands.

I love that this method uses the plants’ own stems to contain the flowers - so neat and compact. The woven wands also smell divine.

If you have access to fresh lavender, you can easily make your own lavender wands - here's what you do.

Big thanks to my son, Will for making this video tutorial for me. You can find more of his work at willfoxfilm.com.

Materials: You’ll need a pair of scissors or garden or kitchen shears, a yard of roughly ¼-inch width ribbon, and a bunch of lavender flowers.

Step 1: Harvest the flowers

Try to cut the lavender stems as long as you can without cutting away any healthy leaves on the plant. If possible, do this when the flowers are fresh (I waited a little too long, next time, I'll do it sooner) as the stems will be most pliable when they're greener. And keep in mind that you’ll need an odd number of stems to make each wand.

You can also harvest all of the flowers as that's good for the plant. Anything that’s too short or too irregular to use for your wands, you can just hang up to dry and then use the dried flower buds to make sachets with.

Once you've harvested all your flowers, it’s time to sort them into sizes - you want to keep them roughly the same size and length and prioritize full, straight flowers over ones that are curving to one side.

Step 3: Remove the leaves

Now that you're all sorted out, remove the leaves from each stem as they’d get in the way when we’re weaving the wand. The leaves come right off - very easy.

All your stems should be bare now and you're ready to sort them into a group for your wand. You want either 11 or 13 stems for the wand. You just need an odd number. You can use more if you want it to be a bit fatter - it will just take longer to weave.

Step 5: Line the stems up and trim

Line them all up so that the heads of the flowers are at the same point (not the ends of the stems). Then tie your ribbon just below the flower heads. Once they’re secure, trim the ends of the stems to match the length of the shortest one.

Step 6: Lightly crimp the stems for ease of folding

Take the dull edge of your shears or some other blunt object and gently press each stem just below the ribbon to soften it in that spot. Doing this will help you bend the stems backwards without them breaking. Make sure you get them all.

Step 7: Make the cage

One by one, bend all of the stems down over the flowers to create the little cage that will encase the flowers through which you'll weave the ribbon. Try to space them evenly. It’s a little fiddly.

Now that you've got your cage of stems, it’s time to start weaving the ribbon through them. The first time around is the hardest - definitely a little awkward but then it gets easier. Since you have an odd number of stems, you will keep going over and under, over and under, around and around in a downward spiral.

Step 9: Tie off the ribbon

When you reach the bottom (aka the actual top of the flowers but they're pointing down inside the cage), it’s time to tie a knot to close it off. You can also wrap the ribbon around the end the stems to the end of those and then tie it off. I prefered to end mine at the bottom of the flowers, though.

And voila. Mmmm, it smells so good!

Hang your wand(s) up in a dark, dry spot for about two weeks. It will shrink a little bit as it dries so I may need to gently pull the ribbons to tighten them up later.

Once it’s dry, you can use it as a sachet and a moth repellent in your closet or in a dresser drawer. Or just hang it up anywhere you want to catch a whiff of lavender. It smells wonderful

.

Share photos of your completed wands and tag me if you make one. I'd love to see your finished product!

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