Pesto!  I tried many pesto recipes this year, and my favorite? A very nutty and cheesy pesto with beautiful color and a splash of wine.  The recipe goes something like this:

2 cup (packed tightly) basil leaves

Enough olive oil to get it to the consistency you want (probably at least 1/4 cup)

1/4 cup of wine (pour yourself a glass, drink half, and assume the remainder is about right).  I prefer white for this, but red is good too

4-5 cloves of garlic

A dump of (around 1 cup) Parmesan cheese

A handful or two (around 1 cup) of TOASTED pine nuts

Blend using hand blender with the chopper attachment. I use a KitchenAid hand blender because that’s as close as I get to a food processor or blender in my kitchen, and I love it.  Note that there is as much cheese and nuts as basil, so if you are a true basil-lover this might not do it for you.  Also, the pesto stays greener with the wine.  Instead, you could add lemon juice for the same purpose, but I don’t like the flavor as well.

More fresh carrots, beets, and turnips.  I have decided my favorite way to eat root vegetables is by broiling with some olive oil and s&p.  It always brings out the sweetness and increases the flavor.  Sunita’s favorite carrots are Maple-Dill Carrots.  They are really good, just not really good for you all smothered in sugar and butter.

Yum!  Green beans. Hubby’s favorite way to eat green beans is with butter and salt, nothing else.  I’m competing against memories of Grandma’s house anytime I try anything different.  I have tried at least one other recipe (and there have been weeks where we have eaten them many a night).  I used a recipe out of Everyday Food but it was basically just adding toasted almonds and a little olive oil.  Either way, fresh green beans are sooo good.

I did get out to a family blueberry farm to get some blueberries but I didn’t make much with them.  Mostly those get tucked into the freezer for a blue burst of sunshine in the middle of winter.

There was much more, but considering I’m more than a month behind…this will do.

Strawberries fresh from the garden, straight to…

…yummy desserts and…

…freezer jam.  I so love this jam, the strawberry flavor really shines and the sugar (compared to canning) is minimal (4 cups fruit to 1 & 1/2 cups sugar).  The only pectin I’ve ever found that uses this little sugar is Ball’s No Cook Freezer Jam packets as shown below.

Husband also picked pounds and pounds of cherries for me this month and I got some rhubarb from a friend, so there was also some canning to be done.

Cherry pie filling in the back, rhubarb jam in the middle and cherry jam in the front.  The rhubarb jam is new for me and I LOVE it.  I tried two recipes, one with ginger, one without.  The one with ginger is OK for chip dip (especially spicy chips) or good for jam if you really, really like ginger (recipe here).  The cherry jam is a new recipe (seen here) as well.  I find most jam and jellies use way too much sugar and it ends up masking the fruit flavor.  The new rhubarb recipe left enough of the true flavor of the rhubarb for me and the cinnamon added a nice touch (recipe here).

Veggies from the garden thinly sliced for veggie fries.  But I think I made them too small or too thin.  I tried half in the oven and half in the microwave.  I coated them with oil and salted them.  Most of them turned out too burnt or too floppy, but a few were perfect.  The candy cane looking rounds were Chiogga beets, the white was Oasis turnip, the red was Bull’s Blood beets, and the orange is Purple Haze carrots.  I’ll try it again but I wish I had a mandolin to use.  It is a very easy thing to do and if you have an abundance of veggies and like chips this is a must try.

I also have some basil in the fridge for pesto.  I know this is going to be a yummy month.