PESTO

As I've been drawing food the last few years I've become more brave in trying some classic recipes. One of these is pesto. I happened to be paging through a magazine one day and came across this recipe and was shocked with it's simplicity.

I actually had most of the ingredients tucked into my cabinets, garden and refrigerator. The missing ingredient, pine nuts, was given to me by a friend (after I traded some fresh strawberries with her). I hate to admit that even though I was growing basil in the garden, I really didn't appreciate it's lovely scent until I prepared it into pesto.

My first batch was amazing, so a few weeks later I made a larger batch, then froze it in ice cube trays.  I plan to use these throughout the winter and mix them into pasta, potatoes, spaghetti sauce and whatever else needs a little extra flavor.

PESTO

Ingredients
1/2 clove of garlic
1/4 cup of pine nuts
2 cups of fresh basil
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Directions
In a food processor, finely chop 1/2 clove of garlic.
Add 1/4 cup of pine nuts and grind.
Add 2 cups of basil and process with 1/4 cup of olive oil.
Add 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese and process to combine.
Season with salt and pepper.

This recipe is from Whole Living Magazine.  Their recipe is written in a more flexible format so you can mix in different herbs, nuts and cheese for different tastes.

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Fruit Vegetables

You've heard the saying that a tomato is really a fruit...well, it's true.
The rest of these are also fruits.  Botanically speaking, it's anything with a seed in it.

These are also all vegetables.  Without getting too deep, the word vegetable is a culinary term, not a botanical one.  If you're cooking they are vegetables, if you're classifying plants they are fruits.  I'm sure I've over simplified this for the botanists out there, but hopefully you get the general idea.  You can find the print here.

Tomato and Mozzarella

As you know I'm not a big fan of tomatoes. I happened to mention this at work and someone shared how they spruce up a fresh sliced tomato...add balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then top with a nice piece of mozzarella cheese. That actually sounds good and might prompt me to try one from the garden this year. {thanks Denise!}