today

I’ve been spending most of my time getting our food stored.  Yesterday I did another batch of pickles. Today I canned a few more sets of beans and made pesto from the huge basil plant.

I brought this in from the garden today:

cucumbers, basil, zucchini, and 2 tomatoes

Pepper almost ready:

veggie photos

I have been busy the last week, so here are lots of photos for you.  We spent last week house-sitting for my in-laws and so I took a lot of photos of their beautiful veggies & herbs.

okra, greens, basil, rosemary, peppers

couple of dinners:

veggie tacos

roasted garlicky potatoes with mushrooms & peppers (a rachel ray recipe)

This was absolutely delicious and I have made it again probably twice now.  I adapted the mushrooms & peppers, and just sautéed them instead of stacking the veggie mix atop the portobellos.  I also left out the cheese.  I think I will make this recipe again the veggie stack way and add tofutti cream cheese.

freezing basil

In a previous post, I showed my process of freezing squash & zucchini.  Freezing herbs, is a great way to preserve those beautiful fresh herbs from your garden.  I planted a bunch of herbs in one of my Mom’s flower gardens and the basil did INCREDIBLE.  The plant that I bought was so very small, so I didn’t think it would grow as well as it did. The red arrow below shows how small it was when I planted the basil.

My Mom sent me the pic below last month.  She trimmed it back after this and it doubled in size.

Below is the process I used to freeze basil:

freezing basil

1. wash basil in the salad spinner
2. place basil in food processor
3. add 1-2 T of olive oil
4. pulse until basil & oil have mixed together
5. spoon basil mix into ice cube tray and freeze

herbs!

Well, the weekend flew by, and I didn’t have much time to get some things done that I wanted to.  I did spend all morning rinsing & freezing basil in ice cub trays.  My Mom brought me a big garbage bag full of herbs, mostly basil, but also lavender and lots of rosemary. Hopefully, I’ll make another blog post about how to (I) freeze basil.