A Frozen Home for Sweet Basil

The days are cooling and the nights are getting quite chilly, so it's a matter of time - and not much of it - before that killing frost creeps in. For me, this becomes an urgent time. A time to start behaving as the squirrels … scurrying, collecting and storing tirelessly during the waning daylight hours of October.

We had our first light frost last night and I am very grateful that I had harvested the last of the sweet basil yesterday. In between other tasks I somehow managed to make a simple pesto for the freezer. By simple, I mean … basil, extra virgin olive oil and salt. No cheese, no roasted nuts. This way I can add the flavor, verve and green goodness of basil to anything I'm cooking, and can always add Pecorino, garlic and nuts to it later for the thing that most folks think of as "pesto."

I make my simple pesto in the food processor, just chopping the plant matter with a touch of sea or kosher salt and adding enough oil so that it holds itself together. Then I drop dollops of it, by whatever measure pleases me in the moment, onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and pop it in the freezer for a few hours until they firm up (I let it go overnight this time - because linear time got in the way). Then I transfer them into freezer bags. Easy!

So today, that's just what I did. I bagged my little frozen basil kisses for their new home in a deep freeze.

Side note: One thing that amuses me, year after year, is the green thumb that comes with harvesting and plucking the leaves from the plant to make this freezer preserve. It's a stain that takes two-r-three days to wash-n-wear off.

Attractive, don't you think?

That's what I made today. Peace.