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)

a poem a day!!!!!!!!!

OK, so, right now my students are all freaking out because I assigned one poem a day for the whole month. YEAH!!!!!! EVIL!!!!!!!! Here is my first one.
Everyone is concerned with
what lies deep within
the heart and soul and such things
But it is in your face
that I see you
a shallow, light-filled stream
laughing across the surface
And I am sure that
your bedrock is down there
hardened and broken
but on this leafless spring morning
I am looking for the sun.

My Road

For all of my students... I am sick of keeping two blogs that are primarily the same thing, so, I am only going to keep this one from now on.

(remember, you can click on any of these pictures to make them larger)

(I took all of these today on a little walk down my street)

My Road...

I want to challenge any of you to a "road" challenge. I propose that I live on the complete nicest road in Rutland. I know I do, and I am going to prove it to you. My road has character. It's really, really old and has really cool things about it that those newer roads can't even touch. Things like trees... not just trees though, old, huge trees, and fruit trees. Grapes grow wild on the side of the road and there are pear trees in the old pasture. Apple trees completely line my road.

If you went by in a car, you would never even notice them... but take a walk and you can smell them.

My road is tiny, less than a quarter mile long. There are definitely less than twenty, more like fifteen. Most of them are really old. One of the nicest used to be a tavern in the 1800's.

To top that off, the writer of "A History of Rutland Massachusetts", Jonas Reed, used to live there in the 1800's. It has a cold cellar and a really old barn with a ghost pony.... don't ask, just believe me. It also still has the horse hitch at the front of it.

Alright you say, you think I have won already, I haven't even started yet! My road has the continuation of the old cart road that goes up into the woods after the tarred road curves away. It's is super beautiful, and rocky. We call it "Stony." There is a cart path that heads into the woods from it that goes in around five miles all the way down to the Ware river that runs behind my house. There is an old stone that now rests on the common in the center of town. It is an Indian "corn stone." They found that 100 years ago down that path into the woods behind my house.

I am still going... There is a path that leads to an school house about 2oo yards from my house.

The best is still to come.

Ok, so that tavern, the one that Jonas Reed lived in, has a huge barn that once kept a whole bunch of cows and such. Well, my road has a tunnel under it that no one knows about. The cows used to cross under the road and into pasture through it. I wen't under there today and it is still in great condition.

What other road has a tunnel under it built over 100 years ago?

I love my road.