Brrrrr and Basil
It is officially fall. We were this close to having a hard freeze this past weekend. The beginning of October is early for a freeze in our area and I could not believe that when were shopping at an outdoor mall that I wished I had a scarf.....and maybe a hat.
I finally could run again this weekend now that I am eight weeks past the stress fracture. Of course it is my luck that my first running morning it was 33 degrees. Oh well, at least I could start again. And by start again I mean from the beginning since I have not run for 8 weeks and I felt every step....and are still feeling it today every time I walk up the stairs.
Another positive weather related note-we are not going to see the sun for at least a week so I will spending a lot of time indoors and wishing it was May. Sigh.....
But enough with the complaining, I do love fall (but usually I am a bigger fan of the period of the mid fifties and not the mid thirties) and since I am not spending all my time outside working in the garden I am newly re-energized when it comes to house projects. I think I am even ready to make some goals with...gasp...timelines. Stay tuned...
Since the freeze is right around the corner I set out to preserve as much as the garden as possible. I already did tomatoes, but next was the basil.
And since I had no idea what I was doing, I set it up like a science experiment.
First I started with a lot of basil (since it is an official "experiment" I made sure to use precise terms like "a lot")
Then I washed half of it, tore off the leaves, and put it in the food processor. I then added a swirl of olive oil and chopped away.
Then I portioned out the mixture into "basil cubes" which I hope will be the perfect size to use in recipes all winter.
At this point I came to the first issue. Should I add water to make sure I can get them out of the tray...or would that make it mushy when I defrosted the perfect portion for a recipe?? Decisions decisions. Since I was experimenting I decided to do it both ways and see which worked the best (in my head I could hear my high school science teacher saying "the addition of water is one independent variable while the one with just oil is the other, and the dependent variable blah blah blah....").
But this science experiment was not completed. I also read that you can just stick basil in a bag, push out all the air and shove it in the freezer. That method was a lot faster and less messy than the previous one so I also gave it a try.
So now the beer fridge is filled with pasta sauce, frozen tomatoes, basil cubes and bags of basil. Every time you open it to get a beer, it smells like an Italian kitchen. We will see which independent variable had the best outcome on the dependent variable. Don't worry I will take lots of data (scientific of course) and come back and report. I think I might have just found our future children's first science project .......
I finally could run again this weekend now that I am eight weeks past the stress fracture. Of course it is my luck that my first running morning it was 33 degrees. Oh well, at least I could start again. And by start again I mean from the beginning since I have not run for 8 weeks and I felt every step....and are still feeling it today every time I walk up the stairs.
Another positive weather related note-we are not going to see the sun for at least a week so I will spending a lot of time indoors and wishing it was May. Sigh.....
But enough with the complaining, I do love fall (but usually I am a bigger fan of the period of the mid fifties and not the mid thirties) and since I am not spending all my time outside working in the garden I am newly re-energized when it comes to house projects. I think I am even ready to make some goals with...gasp...timelines. Stay tuned...
Since the freeze is right around the corner I set out to preserve as much as the garden as possible. I already did tomatoes, but next was the basil.
And since I had no idea what I was doing, I set it up like a science experiment.
First I started with a lot of basil (since it is an official "experiment" I made sure to use precise terms like "a lot")
Then I washed half of it, tore off the leaves, and put it in the food processor. I then added a swirl of olive oil and chopped away.
Then I portioned out the mixture into "basil cubes" which I hope will be the perfect size to use in recipes all winter.
At this point I came to the first issue. Should I add water to make sure I can get them out of the tray...or would that make it mushy when I defrosted the perfect portion for a recipe?? Decisions decisions. Since I was experimenting I decided to do it both ways and see which worked the best (in my head I could hear my high school science teacher saying "the addition of water is one independent variable while the one with just oil is the other, and the dependent variable blah blah blah....").
But this science experiment was not completed. I also read that you can just stick basil in a bag, push out all the air and shove it in the freezer. That method was a lot faster and less messy than the previous one so I also gave it a try.
So now the beer fridge is filled with pasta sauce, frozen tomatoes, basil cubes and bags of basil. Every time you open it to get a beer, it smells like an Italian kitchen. We will see which independent variable had the best outcome on the dependent variable. Don't worry I will take lots of data (scientific of course) and come back and report. I think I might have just found our future children's first science project .......