Hanna Is Hungry: Garden | One last garden update...

I leave for Castlegar in three days and leave the gardeness behind...so sad. I will be back in a couple weeks to can diced tomatoes, pasta sauce and roasted tomatoes. At that point I'll also rip out the basil and freeze and dry what remains of it. Frozen herbs are the next best thing to fresh.

So with my mother this weekend I made 4 kinds of soup and canned them...I have about...30? jars of soup...40? Need to count later. Then yesterday I blanched and froze a big bag of diced yellow zucchini and a big bag of patty pan squash. I also made 4 packages of ratatouille and froze.

My freezer also contains much strawberries, raspberries and asparagus. Oh and cherries. And dried cherries. And I have three kinds of jam made.

I know that Barb thinks she wins Domestic Goddess of the Year because she produced a child and all, but I think I'm definitely in the running here.

I currently have 24 packages of pesto...I think I can make 30. If you all were wondering about my pestoness, here's what do (it's from Anne Lindsay's Lighthearted Cookbook). You could add pine nuts as is traditional but it cuts the fat down without and I don't miss them. Sometimes I toast them and toss them with the pasta though.

1)Pick as much basil as you can, measure how many cups you get of lightly packed leaves. One cup=One recipe. However if you do more at once it blends easier.

2)Blanch the basil by submerging it in boiling water then immediately removing it and running it under the tap. I use a colander. This step can be skipped but it makes the pesto a rich beautiful green.

3)In your blender add the basil, 2 cloves of garlic per cup of basil and some olive oil. 2 tbps per cup of basil. Ish.

4)Blend the crap out of it. For longer than I do because I had half a garlic clove floating around in my last batch. I mean, I could micro plane the garlic first. But I am too lazy.

5)Pour into small ziplocks. One recipe makes a decent 2 person meal. They say it's for 4 but I like my pasta pestoy. Squish the pesto around until the bag is as flat as possible, this way they stack nice in the freezer and thaw quickly.

6)Label ziplocks with the following: "PESTO - add 1/2 cup Parmesan and 1/2 cup pasta water" Because that's what you do when you want to eat it this winter. I don't like to freeze the cheese in because it goes all lumpy if you overheat it while thawing.

Pesto! Fun for everyone!

Want my Ratatouille recipe?