MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

Pesto Queens

Even this morning, the kitchen smells of basil and garlic. I can't remember how many years my friend D and I have been doing this, 3 or 4? It's our fall tradition now to get together and make pesto from the basil she grows in her garden. She grows the basil that makes it possible, and I have the food processor that makes it a breeze.

She said she grew 4 basil plants this year, and since I was the one shopping for the oil, cheese and pine nuts, I tried to calculate how much of everything we'd need. I'd forgotten that D grows monster bushes of basil-- she walked in with 2 huge trash bags full of them-- and so I *only* bought 12 cups of grated parmesan, 20 oz of pine nuts, and 2 tall bottles of extra virgin olive oil. And all that added up to $52! We ended up running out of cheese and nuts and oil 3/4 of the way through, so I fortified our stash with an extra bag of cheese and some walnuts, and D brought out the extra bottle of the oil that she had brought in case. Our last few batches were made sans cheese, since we still ran out of it, and we'll add the cheese ourselves to that green goo later.

The thing that took the longest was pulling the basil leaves off the plants, about 2 1/2 hours. It was relaxing work, like knitting or quilting, and we got to talk a lot, which was great. Once we got done with that, we did the messy work-- prepping garlic, pouring oil, mixing up the ingredients in the food processor, perfecting our recipe from last year. And then we got to taste, again and again, and it was so good. The fresh pesto tastes so green and full of summer sun, and the bite of garlic, the smoothness of the cheese.

So now we have a ton of pesto, each! I don't can or do much in the way of food preservation, but with pesto I freeze batches in ice cube trays, and then we have it for tasty suppers over the winter. Our favorite is chicken-pesto-pasta, which pretty much describes the dish. Pasta and chunks of chicken breast are tossed in a bowl with pesto and a little more olive oil. Yum!

On a side note, I turned 43 on Sunday, the first day of fall, and had a lovely day. My family woke up early and made pancakes and sausage for breakfast, then we went to church. After that, the kids all went over to their friends' house to play D&D (run by the father, who is one of our friends), so DH and I had some hours to ourselves. We went to Barnes & Noble so I could buy books for my birthday treat, had some lunch and then drover over to Lake Calhoun to walk around. It was a summery day in the mid-80's, humid and hot, good to enjoy the hot weather that is fleeting this time of year. And later, dinner out with the kids and eating French Silk Pie (my reqeust).

It was a fine day, and I'm not minding being a year older, since I kept forgetting throughout the last year if I was 42 or 43... you know you're old when you can't quite recall anymore!

Summer, sigh...

I know some people say that Labor Day brings the end of summer, but I know it's not really true. Well, the kids will go back to school on Tuesday but the weather will stay nice for awhile (knock on wood!). I'm sitting in front of my computer by the window and it's feeling stiffling in here, but we now have to keep all the windows shut or open just a crack. Jinx, our huge black cat (he's a lean 1 year old but a big panther-like creature) has figured out how to bust out of the screens on our house. We're determined to keep him an indoor cat for many reasons, but he is not on board with that program. So, until we buy more heavy-duty screens or something, we can't throw open the windows wide.

As for summer, ours was low-key. The kids had classes in the middle of the summer-- online gym and health classes for the twins and the classroom portion of driver's ed. They have their permits now but haven't really wanted to drive yet. Maybe after behind-the-wheel. Younger DS had some fun summer school classes, movie-making and volleyball. And the kids all had sail-boat lessons, which luckily I'd paid for in the spring...

We went on a little 3-day trip to Two Harbors and had a nice time reconnecting with Lake Superior and the beauty of nature up there. That was our only trip out of town this summer, since DH lost his job at the beginnng of summer and we knew (and it was) almost impossible for him to find a job in the summer. We're hoping September is the month. But we've been managing to survive, which is amazing... he's had some little teaching jobs to patch us through and we've just been spending as little as possible.

We did get to do some of the traditional summer fun stuff-- Renaissance Festival, State Fair, going to the beach at Lakes Nokomis and Harriet, picnics, backyard bonfires, stuff like that. Now that it's Labor Day weekend, I'm reminded that there's more of that I'd like to do, and if I want to do it, it had better be soon!

And I wrote a children's book manuscript on a very tight deadline this summer. A lot of it was written while I sat beside Lake Harriet as the kids took their sail boat lessons, and that is a very good memory for me! I was really pleased with the draft I wrote, and now a publisher is looking at it. We'll see how that one goes.

Tuesday will bring the shool year, junior year for the twins, a new school and 7th grade for younger DS, and more time to work on my writing and starting to write for money for me. And hopefully job prospect for DH. I'm excited to see what the new school year brings. It always feels like a fresh clean start, with the new notebooks and pencils.

And now to pet the mournful Jinx who is meowing and moping around the house...