This is the first summer in at least 4 years that I’ve had enough basil to make pesto.  Since I didn’t have a fenced in deer proof area, I’d only had a few pots of it growing on the deck and it doesn’t grow in pots like it grows in the ground . . not for me anyway.  All week I’d planned to make pesto but had to can tomatoes one day, green beans the next and just hadn’t gotten around to it.  Yesterday evening when I was out watering, I looked at the basil that was about to make seeds and said . . you have to cut that basil back .. tonight! So, I trimmed 3 of the 8 plants and this is how much I ended up with.  I tried stuffing it in the colander to wash but it overflowed and took way longer to snip the leaves and wash them than it actually did to make the pesto.

Here’s how I make mine:

Pesto:

2 cups as full as you can fill them of washed basil leaves (mash them down and get as many as you can in the cup)
1/4 – 3/8 cup olive oil
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 T. chopped garlic
1 T. Fruit Fresh or lemon juice

In a food processor, chop/blend the olive oil, cheese, pine nuts and garlic.

Add the basil leaves and Fruit Fresh and process til desired consistency.  I like mine just barely chopped up.

Put into small containers and freeze.  I often freeze mine in ice  cube trays but they seem to have disappeared.  Once it’s frozen, dump them into a zipper freezer bag.  For this batch, I filled the little 1/2 cup containers I had and then I sprayed Pam on plastic wrap and wrapped up 1/2 cup amounts.

Then the little packets went into the freezer bag.

This ended up being 6 cups of pesto and I’ll get twice that much when I trim the remaining plants and hopefully, the plants will continue to produce right up til the first frost.   Yep, it’s a very good year for pesto!   It’s so easy to make and there’s so much you can do with it and oh . . it’s so good!  It was really hard to keep my spoon out of that but it was kinda late at night to be eating so much garlic.  You never know though . . we could have vampires.  Maybe I should . . nevermind . . I’m not eating it all.  I’ll be a nice mom/wife and share it with my family.