Mangia Pesto!

My house smells like garlic. Last night I harvested the rest of the basil plants from the garden--about 20 plants, I'd already done the other half on Wednesday night. My brother-in-law, Michael, came over with a garbage bag full of basil from his own garden. We sat at the coffee table, watching the Olympics, and pinching the fragrant green leaves for what seemed like forever but was only from about 9pm-12am.

All this pesto-making madness started right after work. I had to run to Costco for extra bags of pine nuts, a bottle of peeled garlic (for Michael--I used elephant garlic from the farmer's market, which I had to peel by hand) and an extra jug of olive oil. Before going out to the garden to pull of up the basil plants, I had to make-up three beds for some impending house guests that slept here last night on their way through town. By the time I finally sat down with my heap of basil, I was already exhausted.

This picture only show about half of the basil I processed last night:
Michael had a lot less basil to pinch that I did so he was able to get all his pesto made in the food processor before going home last night. I made mine this morning at 8am. What a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning!

Bathing basil:
On Wednesday night I ended up with 3 large yogurt containers full of pesto. And then this morning I ended up with 36 half-pint jars of pesto. In total I think we now have 1.5 gallons of garlicky, basil goodness in the deep freeze. Mama mia, that's a lotta pesto. Dave and I are so excited to have this much stored away. We usually ration it throughout the year but we won't have to this time!