presto

I love Sunday afternoons. I love being able to do nothing and have no where to go. I love that it's the perfect time to cook or prep things for the week.

Today's afternoon was spent trying to figure out what to do with the tons of basil we received in our CSA package this week. We thought about using it for pasta or for salad, but then finally decided on making pesto. You see, we've never made pesto before but we thought that it would be the perfect experiment for a Sunday afternoon.

Making pesto turned out to be harder than we thought. We had all the ingredients down pat (basil, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan) but the flavour was off. We played around with the quantities and finally found a combination that we liked. I won't give a recipe since I think that pesto is something that needs to be played around with until you get the perfect combination of flavours.

The basil pesto turned out so well that we decided to try another type. Along with our huge basil plant that we recieved this week, we also received garlic scapes. Garlic scapes are a milder form of garlic. The twirly stalk is what garlic bulbs grow when planted. You can use it in place of garlic in all your dishes.

The garlic scape pesto was made identical to the basil pesto, except that I added lemon juice at the end for that bright finish. It turned out great and will be especially good for pasta and seafood dishes.

Not a bad way to spend the end of the weekend...and a perfect way to capture summer.