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Wednesday, Oct. 02, 2002 - 8:22 p.m. That�s what the tire repairguy said to me today, when he stopped by to get paid for work he did recently. Well, that�s not exactly what he said. He used the word �piss�. I didn�t want to title this entry �Dude! The toolroom smells like cat piss!� Who wants to read anything with the word �piss� in the title? I imagine a few of you have clicked on to the next diary on your d-land fav�s list, just because I used the word so early in my entry. Why does my toolroom smell like cat piss, you ask? I don�t think it smells like that wonderful substance, for your information. What he couldn�t know was the fact that I had just spent my lunch hour plucking leaves off of basil plants. Yeah, basil. That licorice-ey smelling Italian herb used heavily in tomato sauces and what not. I grow it every year, and pick a few sprigs here and there for cooking use during the summer. But the main reason I grow this frost-sensitive, easily bruised leafy herb is for our supply of pesto. Lease had a pasta dish (many years ago) that was basically just vermicelli coated with a thick layer of basil pesto. She fell in love with the flavor, and I have been making pesto every year around this time ever since. It takes all summer for the plants to mature for harvest. I have to deadhead all of the flower stalks that pop up throughout the summer. This causes the plant to send out even more leafy growth, which is what I am aiming for. I usually harvest the crop in early September, but since we had such a late, dry summer this year I held off until today. I cut all of my plants at ground level and hauled them up to the toolroom before work started this morning. By lunchtime, I noticed that some of the leaves were turning dark brown, meaning that either my rough handling or the heat (89� degrees again today! Enough already!) was starting to take it�s toll. Since I had the time (during lunch) to pluck the leaves from the woody stalks, I did it then. Once removed, I put all the good stuff into a grocery store bag and put the bag into our work fridge. This was the reason why the tire guy�s nose was so active. All the pulling and tearing caused the leaves to release some of their essential oils. This caused the room to smell like the back kitchen in a small, family-owned Italian restaurant. Not like a cat box. Oh well- if you spent your entire day removing old and mounting new tires, your sense of smell might be a little wack, too�. I brought the basil home and set to the task of making a one-year supply of pesto. I pulled some more basil leaves from my home garden�s plants, and also picked the other green ingredient, parsley, from my herb bed. I put these, along with freshly grated Parmesan cheese, crushed garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper into the food processor in small batches. (Before someone writes me to say I am forgetting something, I know what it is- pine nuts. We don�t use them (or the walnuts that some people substitute with) because we are not big �nut-eaters� here at casa Roadiepig. The pine nuts are also quite expensive, so that�s another strike against them. Let me put it this way- we don�t miss the flavor, so we don�t miss them.) Anyway�� After thoroughly chopping and mixing the mixture, I measured the pesto into a measuring cup. Each full cup went into a Ziploc� bag, labeled and put away for future use. I had enough basil to make 13 cups. One cup will go to my sis (she and her husband love it, too), one cup will stay in our �fridge until we use it in the next few days (chicken pesto pizza? Maybe), and the other 11 went into the chest freezer down in the basement. That means we can have one meal containing pesto per month until the next crop comes due in 2003. That might be enough. If it�s not, I think I have enough basil still on the plants in my home garden for a few more cups��.
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