out in the early

I love mornings. I love being awake before anyone in the house and in the world at large. The luxurious extra time afforded by going to bed early is so completely appealing to me. Who cares about late night tv anyway. I woke up early this morning... 5:30 or so, and got out of bed. We live pretty close to a beautiful state park, so I loaded Chaucer up into the truck and off we went for a very early morning walk. It was so early that the birds weren't even up to their vocal crescendo. The fog was still thick in the trees and the air was silent. This is what I love. It is intimate really. I love the closeness of atmosphere.

As I was walking along, allowing Chaucer to run wild and free down the road and in the woods, river etc, I walked up to this apple tree, because it was there, on the side of the road, with apples weighing down its branches, and low and behold, simply the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen was there tucked around one of the branches. It was beautiful really... although it did remind me of a tomato horn worm (my nemesis), but it was green and red and blue and absolutely huge!!! Maybe close to five inches long. crazy... So, I took a picture and ogled it crazily for a few minutes.

I love mornings, and today, for both me and Chauc, was a great one.

Thank you quiet,

thank you fog,

thank you solitude.

Basil Pesto

Basil Pesto, most people just call this pesto, but there are really tons of different types of pestos. "Pesto" actually means "to pound" in Italian. I almost tried to make some this time in my mortar and pestle, but it was still a bit too daunting.

My basil, Genovese Basil, grew so well this year. It's important to treat it right so it doesn't grow into tall treeish things that fall over. Pretty early on, you should start shaping it into bushes by nipping the tops off at the first branch out of leaves. Just leave the two side growth of leaves and take the center stem. The two side growths will then take over and the basil will start to bush out. just keep doing this ever once and a while, and you will end up with nice full bushes of basil.

I picked as much Basil as I could hold between two arms, and I still have a ton of it still

growing. (So, if anyone wants a bunch of Basil just come on over!! I mean that.)

Making Pesto is actually super easy. I followed a recipe that I have used before... I think its Nigella Lawson's on the

food network, but they are all very similar.

5 cups of Fresh Basil (leaves and supple stems only) if your basil has flower spikes make sure to not include these because they are really bitter.

1 peeled Garlic clove

1/4 cup of pine nuts

big grind of pepper, and a pinch of salt

1/2 cup of finely grated parmesean

1/2 cup of olive oil

Before I tell you how to put all of this together, I want to remind you that in recipes like t

his the quality of the ingredients really shows through. Get really good olive oil and parmesan. Use freshly ground pepper. Be good to your pesto.

So push all of the basil into the bowl of a food processor. Include the garlic, pine nuts, pepper and salt and pulse it all until it's nicely minced. You might have to stop the thing and push the basil down a few times. Make sure to scrape the sides down with a rubber spatula.

Then, once it is all minced up, start the processor on low and slowly trickle in the olive oil. I used the same 1/4 cup measuring cup for the pine nuts. I streamed it in and and once the first 1/4 cup was done, I stopped it and scraped down the sides. Then I refilled the 1/4 cup and repeated.

Process this until you have a nice pasty pesto. It shouldn't be liquidy, it should be the

consistency of...hmm... creamed spinach? That sounds too gross.... I can't think of any other thing that

consistency. Just like a nice paste not a liquid.

At any rate, once it is done, scrape it out into a bowl and fold in the parmesan....... Done!

I freeze mine in ice cube trays and keep them in a ziplock bag through the winter.

Jenny and I recently went out to North Hampton for a date without the kids. (First time ever) and we had lunch at a great place, Sylvester's. I had the Smithie's Favorite: which was a grilled cheese smothered with pesto. It was amazing!!!!! Here is my attempt at reliving that experience.

We also make pesto pizza, which is a basic pizza crust lightly coated with olive oil, pesto and cheese. Yum!

Enjoy

cilantro pesto

Ah, Cilantro Pesto. I made this two years ago and it lasted through the entirety of the year. It has a freshness that can't be touched in the dead of winter and in the summer it is exactly the way that summer should taste!

I just took in the first harvest of cilantro this morning. It's important to do that before it goes to flower. The leaves loose their vitality and taste to a degree once the plant flowers. Mine was shooting up spikes of frondy kind of leaves and I new it was now or never. Another thing about growing cilantro that makes it nice, is that the plants are so forgiving. I left about a quarter of the existing leaves on each plant and they will grow into full bushy cilantro plants again within a couple of weeks. Harvesting this stuff is a joy in itself: The smell is amazing.

So, what do you do with a whole harvested garden row of cilantro? MAKE PESTO!! This pesto freezes so well, and doesn't loose a bit of its color. Really, great stuff. The lime really adds to the

natural flavor of the Cilantro, it doesn't get in the way.

I used a recipe that I found three years ago on a foody blog post... here is the link, http://5secondrule.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/04/summertime-is-pesto-time-with-an-overabundance-of-basil-in-my-earth-box-the-boys-and-i-head-outside-on-hot-afternoons-to-p.html. Kind of a big link... anyway, I took between 8 to 10 bunches of cilantro out of my garden and made pesto out of the whole lot of it. So, I have about 8 to 10 times the amount of pesto that

the recipe makes. The final product fit nicely in a larger cereal bowl.

It took about half an hour to finish it up. I would also recommend listening to The Civil Wars while making this. I did, and although I'm not guaranteeing that the pesto will taste better for it, I bet it might. :)

Here is the basic recipe with my own little tweaks here and there.

You can compare it against the original on the blog post that I linked to above.

1 bunch of cilantro (the original blog said to discard the stems a short distance from the leaves, but if you are growing your own cilantro, the stems don't get nearly as woody as the store bought stuff and they have a ton of flavor, so I treat them like asparagus, I bend them until they snap and use the part closest to the leaves. If they don't snap clean then they are too woody to use in the pesto).

1 half a lime, zest and juice

a grind or two of black pepper

3 tablespoons of Canola Oil. (I actually like the clean taste of this better than Olive Oil. This pesto should taste fresh and clean.)

1/16 Tbs of salt. (just a tiny pinch)

And that's it. I grated the limes with a microplane. Everything is pretty straight forward here. Combine the cilantro, lime juice and zest, Black Pepper, and salt in a food processor. Start the thing spinning, then drizzle in about half of the oil as it spins around. Stop it, scrape down the sides with a spatula, then start it up again and drizzle in the rest of the oil. You should really do this in a small steady stream as the pesto churns around. Also, I would advise making at least a double recipe, it doesn't really make a ton and, at least in my food processor, it kind of sat under the blades and didn't blend as well until I added another full recipe to the mix. Plus, it uses up a whole lime nicely.

That's it. Hope you enjoy it. If you choose to make some and try freezing it, I did it in ice cube trays and then kept the little green jewels in a ziploc in the freezer.

Radishes

This is my ode of love to radishes.

Derived from the Latin, Radix, meaning root, the radish was domesticated before Roman times. I love the little guys, they are the first color that comes out of my garden.

They really are magical: I had nothing four days ago, just some greens and today, I have these little red beauties. These are cherry bell radishes. The first of the season are so mild and and juicy with just a tiny bit of pepper at the finish.

I don't have a lot of history with radishes, but here is what I have. I remember my father growing them in the garden even though no one in my family liked them. The natural progression of this was that the radishes grew so much that my early memories of them are of huge woody, cracked things that were so overly peppery that no one but old hardened men may have been willing to eat them.

I also worked for a plastic injection molding factory while I was in college. I was sitting in the "QC'S" office and Irec, the manager on duty came in. Irec was seriously Polish... like as Polish as a man could physically get. He talked with a thick accent that reminded me of Russia. He was also an Ex-merchant marine. He was big and intimidating, but a complete puppy underneath it all. At any rate, Irec loved to talk about all of the vast and rich experiences he had had in his past. In reference, and defense of Poland, Irec wisely said conspiratorially: (please feel free to extend your "R"s and draw out your vowels) "David... (pronouced Daved) Poland is like a radish, its red on the outside but white all in the middle. He winked and walked out of my office leaving me to consider Communism and all of its subtleties.

I am not sure about the political unrest at the heart of Poland, but I will tell you that these red, first appearing vegetables of the season are among my favorites.

#2

Girls are popcorn
fidget
squeak
giggle
smirk
whisper smile whisper
shift
gab gab gab gab gab
glance...glance...
shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

(pop)