Posts from — July 2007

If I could marry a plant, it would be basil.

As a seedling, it’s a darling glossy emerald beauty. It looks like its adult plant from the get-go. So beautiful that when I had to thin the plants we’d started from seed a couple years back, I was nearly reduced to tears. I was pinching off the runts, when I caught the scent of basil. The little seedlings smelled as strongly as the full grown leaves.

I’ve gotten tougher over the gardening years, but I’m still in love with basil.

I suppose others have many uses for basil but I grow it with one purpose in mind: Pesto.

And, although there are many variations on pesto, here’s the very best recipe.

Pesto Sauce
(inspired by Jane Brody’s healthy cooking, but snazzled up a bit)

Put 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 olive oil into the blender. Blend until smooth. Add 2 cups of packed washed fresh basil leaves, preferably straight from the garden. You might need to push the basil down with an implement, with the blender off. Add 1/4 cup of pine nuts and blend until the mixture is smooth. Add 2 tbs of soft butter (that’s where Jane and I part company) and blend. Stir in 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese. Thin with a little water or broth if you’d like.

Our favorite way to eat pesto is on pasta, either by itself or with chicken or shrimp too. Pesto is also great spread for sandwiches or a short cut to making bruschetta. I had a wonderful grilled cheese with pesto at a restaurant that I’m going to imitate at home very soon. It’s also good in a thick vegetable soup or added to mashed potatoes. Most of the time, we go for plain pesto pasta perfection.

The Red Hot Fire Poker was a freebie. We ordered some seeds from Gurney several years ago, and they threw it in as a bonus, as is their policy. Otherwise, The Red Hot Fire Poker is something we probably never would have planted in our yard. We’d never heard of it. Plus it’s not edible. Nor is it an herb. The last two are our major criterion for selecting to put a plant into our garden.

The Red Hot Fire Poker is amusing however. And aptly named. It’s bloom cycle is pretty brief so we’re always pleased when we don’t miss it. Kinda cute too, don’t you think?

I came up with a new recipe today, based on this recipe for Grandmother’s Crustless Pie from solarcooking.org. Mine is actually very different, but the recipe collection from the site provided the inspiration. It’s not really a cobbler and not really a crisp either. I’m at a loss for the perfect name so Apple Oatmeal Crisp will have to suffice.

You’ll need:

4 apples, pealed and sliced

1/4 cup sugar

Cinnamon

1/4 cup butter

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1 cup brown sugar

Butter a round black roaster. Mix the apples and sugar in the pan. In a bowl, combine the oatmeal, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter and sprinkle over apple mixture. Cover and bake in solar oven. Cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.

This was an absolutely wonderful dessert for a hot, hot summer day with no extra heat generated in our kitchen.

I’d garden if only to grow sunflowers.    

When the sunflowers open, it feels like the garden is complete. That’s the first one of the year.

Look closely…… and you can see the bees enjoying the sunflowers too, in their bee-like way.

As a bonus, on top of their almost perfect beauty, we got these sunflowers for free. That’s right– free. Jim makes a point of harvesting some sunflower heads every fall and wintering them over in the house, out of the reach of the persistent neighborhood squirrels. In the spring, he scraps off all the seeds and replants our center bed. The squirrels manage to eat some seeds, but enough survive that we get a good crop of sunflowers. We haven’t bought seeds in 5 years. Beautiful and free. Pretty amazing.

Here’s another solar cooking idea that is so easy I would feel guilty calling it a “recipe.”

Wash 4 or 5 potatoes. Put them in a covered pot. (Do not poke holes in them. It’s completely unnecessary. Poking holes doesn’t help them cook faster. Plus it encourages oxidation, so your potatoes will end up with a series of little black dots in them. This is the voice of experience speaking.) Peel and quarter one large or two small onions and distribute them throughout the potatoes. Peel and add 2 or three whole cloves of garlic (or more, if you adore garlic). Cover the pot and place in your solar cooker until dinner time.

The result, depending on your family size and level of hunger, can be two meals accompaniments. We usually have a couple potatoes for dinner. They are moist and roasty, never mushy, with a lovely hint of onion and garlic.

For breakfast the following morning, we have potato hash. The cold potatoes are firm enough for dicing into neat cubes that are easily browned in a little oil. (Note Jim’s safe and efficient chopping technique.) When they are nearly done, add the onions and any garlic that wasn’t smushed on bread and eaten the previous evening. The onions are unbelievably sweet and almost caramelized. With a couple eggs, this is a wonderful meal to start the day.