Presto! Pesto!

I recently came into possession of a garden mess of weeds that once was a garden.  Very few things in this overgrowth are identifiable.  There are a few green tomatoes, yearning for the sun.  Some sad yellow cucumbers buried beneath the overgrowth.  But the basil* is standing tall and proud.  A veritable taunt to my basil-allergic husband.  Clearly this was a call to pesto.  I grabbed the baby and harvested about a cup of basil* leaves which was just enough for a half-recipe of my mom's pesto.  Of course, since I'm eating alone, a half recipe should be just fine.

*at least I hope it's basil.  Otherwise I just made a delicious and hopefully not poisonous weed pesto.

BASIL PESTO

Let's pretend you have enough basil for the full recipe, shall we?

INGREDIENTS:

2 C basil leaves

1/2 C olive oil

2 T walnuts 

2 cloves garlic

1 t salt

1/2 C freshly grated Parmesan

3 T softened butter

DIRECTIONS:

Put the basil, olive oil, walnuts, garlic and salt into your food processor.  Blend until it looks like pesto. Pour into a bowl and add the parm and the butter.  Stir.  Now you have pesto!  It will keep in the fridge for a week or so, but if you want to freeze it, you can do that before adding the cheese (no idea why it's BEFORE the cheese.  You'll have to ask my mom).

Kindness

My absence has in large part been due to our new arrival.  Our son was born three weeks ago, and needless to say, my cooking has suffered greatly. After returning home from the hospital we've only succumbed to takeout once, mainly because Ryan has been a whiz and cooked us delicious dinners from scratch.  But also, due to the incredible kindness of a work colleague.

My mother used to work with a very wise, very kind woman named Louise who had an expression that really she often used, "People are interesting."  This was about as damning as Louise would ever get, because she was someone who was kind to the bottom of her heart.  And so it's been Louise I've thought about in the days after I've had my son and paid close attention to people's actions rather than their words.

Some of the people I worked with that I considered myself to be quite friendly with have not so much as texted congratulations after being told of our new addition, while others have sent lovely cards and gifts which warmed my heart and another showed just how big her heart is.

Throughout my pregnancy, one work colleague was beyond generous with her advice, time, unwanted baby clothes (tags still on) and prenatal yoga DVDs.  And so when she drove up to visit me the other day, I shouldn't have been surprised to see her kindness extended even further, to bringing us a delicious meal.

A quiche, a salad and a delectable blueberry pie.  Can you ask for anything more?

Okay, fine, you could ask for me to actually update this blog more frequently - which hopefully will start in late August.  And you could ask for a picture of the little one - which I shall respectfully decline at this point.  Maybe later.