Do you ever wonder what to do with all the basil you have grown in your garden or in a container?   I don’t know about you but I have the most prolific crop this year.  Of course, I love fresh basil on tomatoes with mozzarella cheese, I love it made into pesto and serve with pasta and I love to use it to season soups and sauces.

Freshly Picked Basil ready to make Pesto

BASIL IS PART OF THE MINT FAMILY  it is an aromatic herb.  It can be eaten fresh or dried. There are so many RECIPES for using basil where to start.  My favorite is on fresh tomatoes and mozzarella cheese.  I pick the fresh leaves,  place several on top of each other, roll them up and then use my kitchen shears  to snip them into small pieces.  Your joyful kitchen should have kitchen shears.  I use mine for all kinds of things, especially cutting raw chicken.  They will cut right through bones making easy work of cutting up a whole chicken.  And, of course that will save you money not having to buy chicken already cut up. Also works great for cutting sausage that is in CASINGS. But I regress, back to BASIL.

Kitchen Shears

2 cups packed Basil

Cutting rolled basil with kitchen shears

Basil growing on the deck

Basil growing on the deck

Making your own BASIL PESTO is a great way to enjoy fresh basil into the winter months. I freeze it using ice-cube trays and when frozen pop them out and store them  in plastic containers or bags.  Then you just add some cubes to make PESTO PASTA.  There is nothing better than remembering the lazy, wonderful days of summer when you bite into pesto pasta in the dead of winter made with your own or store-bought pesto. It reminds you of those long evenings before dark when you were leisurely dining enjoying the evening. I also dry basil leaves in my  DEHYDRATOR.   I do not have the patience to gather the stalks of basil, tie them with string and hang in the basement or some other dark out-of-the-way place.  It takes too long and when I have done this I seem to forget about them.  So the DEHYDRATOR works for me .  

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Pesto in ice cube tray ready for freezer.

My family will  be enjoying pesto pasta salad for the weekend.  I hope you too will be making something yummy in your Joyful  Kitchen, the heart of your home.

Joy Always, Cissy