Our massive basil plant has officially been put to good use!
Matt, Riese, and I picked most of it one night last week:
And then I turned it into pesto!
I used this recipe for Spinach Basil Pesto which worked out well because I realized I had everything except for the pine nuts that are usually in pesto – thankfully that recipe doesn’t call for any! And we had some spinach to use so I like that it included that, too. I added extra lemon but otherwise followed the recipe and it came out delish.
I decided to use the pesto for my Pesto Baked Salmon, so I defrosted some salmon and threw it in the oven while Matt and Riese worked on corn to have as a side. Riese loves shucking corn. 🙂
We followed the method that Matt’s dad used to grill corn for us a couple weeks ago at their house – we removed the silk (and put it into our compost bin, which is really thriving – we’ve been using the soil on our flower beds!) and left the stalks on but tied them up with some twine.
The stalks are just there to use as a handle basically!
The corn was basted with butter every few minutes and rotated around until it was lightly browned. We ate half of the corn and sliced the other half off the cob and froze it for later because there was way too much for us to eat all at once!
All together now! Plus some sweet potato – I used my how to microwave a sweet potato method to keep that super easy, and after I sliced them I kept it simple and just put some butter on top.
It was a nice and fresh summery meal!
To make use of the extra pesto, the next morning Riese helped me throw together a big pesto pasta salad for us to eat on for lunches during the week.
I used some canned white beans, canned olives, canned artichoke hearts, and fresh cucumber, plus pasta and the pesto.
It came out delicious! We still have a little leftover so I’m going to finish it off early this week. I’ll mix it up and add some chicken and mozzarella to the mix, too!
We still have a little pesto leftover so it got frozen – I just put it in a ziplock bag and flattened it out so it would defrost quickly. We don’t have any ice cube trays or else I would have frozen it in ice cube trays!
Other yumminess highlights from the past week included a dinner out with Matt and Riese at Front Porch in Del Ray – they created a really awesome outdoor dining area by taking over their back parking lot, and you order via your phone. It’s a nice set up!
Riese doesn’t really remember how to sit still/eat at a restaurant anymore so we had to deploy our phones a bit, but it was still fun. I had the burger + fries – love their burgers.
My brother and his wife were in town visiting this weekend which was fun – I got out for a run date with my brother and it was really nice to have some time to catch up just the two of us!
Steve and his wife Roxanne are expecting their first child around Halloween – we are so excited for them! And Riese is pumped for another cousin. 🙂
Steve and I ran mid-morning on Sunday and it was really hot and humid and the route was basically all uphill, but I actually felt pretty good since we kept the pace casual.
Post-run and post-shower brunch with the fam – my eyes were bigger than my stomach so I ended up just having the fruit and the bagel with cream cheese, smoked salmon, egg, and capers and saving the egg and sausage bake for later.
We had a yummy brunch on Saturday, too, with my brother and his wife and our mutual friends that live in the area.
The last food highlight of the weekend was hitting up the farmers’ market on Saturday morning! We hadn’t been in a really long time – it was nice to go back.
I got cantaloupe, a mini watermelon (cute, right?), red pepper, zucchini, pickled beets, and two juicy tomatoes that I’m going to use to make caprese salads with the rest of our basil.
I will leave you with a photo of Zara guarding the basement door – the big excitement this weekend was that Zara caught a mouse (eek!!) in our basement and ever since she’s been quite vigilant keeping an eye on this door that leads to our storage/crawl space area.
I’m hoping it was a one time thing, but we got some catch and release traps set up too just in case!
I’m so glad you guys found my Recent Fiction Books I’ve Read post interesting on Friday! I’ll see you back here on Wednesday with a new recipe post.
Until then, I hope you all have a nice Monday!
What’s the best thing you ate this weekend?
Would you rather run in the heat or the freezing cold? I’d definitely take cold – not a hot weather runner at all!
