This is the fifth day of no power since Hurricane Irene – and while my losses are minimal and replaceable, and I'm grateful for that, I have to say I grieve the loss of my homemade pesto in the freezer more than any of my inconveniences. Basil, its main ingredient, is one of the few things I can grow without the squirrels eating it before harvest time – or before I awake in the morning. This year I went all out – I bought an extra special Romano cheese from Whole Foods Grocery at a price I don’t want to mention – it had just been cut at a Saturday morning "wheel cutting ceremony" of which there was much to-do. I bought organic pine nuts that were similarly priced – maybe more, I think. I always buy good Italian olive oil, so of course I bought more of the same. I found purple garlic which I remembered from my youth because my father used to grow it. I don’t know if purple garlic is better, but it was pricier and there was much nostalgia in buying it anyway. Those are the only five ingredients that make pesto – fresh basil, Romano cheese, garlic, pine nuts, and olive oil – but the dishes that can be made with that simple concoction are endless.
My pesto recipe dates back to an old Bon Appetite magazine from June 1982, several years before my children were born or even considered – but the means and ways to use it have spawned with each passing year. I’ve never skipped a year of making and storing pesto since 1982. I assess that this year’s yield was the best I’ve ever made.
Pesto pasta, pesto potatoes, minestrone with a dollop of pesto stirred in, pesto-baked salmon, pesto-grilled-everything, and of course pesto butter on homemade sourdough bread – these are some of the foods of which there was never any dissent among my family members at any age from toddlerhood-on-up. We all agreed for just those nights when pesto adorned dinner.
I wanted my pesto to be extra tasty this year for those times when my grown children would come home from faraway places. I wanted the memory of "home-in-agreeability" to reign for them. And I wanted enough of it to serve at all occasions – Thanksgiving, Christmas, random weekends, and all birthdays straight through to St. Patty’s Day when the next seedlings are planted. And so I even bought more basil at the farmers’ market when my own plants had exhausted themselves – more basil to make more pesto.
Now every bit of it, all my neatly stacked containers, rot in the warm dark freezer. The kitchen smells acrid and garlicky when I walk into it. I can’t bring myself to open the freezer door and throw it away yet – though it had thawed entirely two days ago. I’ve crossed the threshold of caring whether the power comes on today – my losses are tallied.
I’m not talking about the price of ingredients, a mere number that follows a dollar sign – that’s not what I tally or grieve. That’s not the value I assign to homemade pesto. And I realize there are things far more valuable that I have not lost. But I still think about the extra special effort I put into it this year – early morning treks to obtain quality ingredients – and all for the promise of another season when everyone might come together and agree. Pesto is the taste of agreement. I wonder if the likes of Irene can understand that.
A woman’s heart is crazy and secretive that way – she’ll do so much and spend too much to implant a thing of value in the subconscious storehouse of memory for those who will never witness the effort or know about it or maybe even care about it . . . only, strangely, sense it by tasting . . .
The 1982 Recipe:
2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
2 large garlic cloves
½ cup pine nuts
¾ cup freshly grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
2/3 cup olive oil
Grind it all up together in whatever way you choose – mortar and pestle, or blender. And no, Irene, it's not the same as store-bought.
Pesto pasta, pesto potatoes, minestrone with a dollop of pesto stirred in, pesto-baked salmon, pesto-grilled-everything, and of course pesto butter on homemade sourdough bread – these are some of the foods of which there was never any dissent among my family members at any age from toddlerhood-on-up. We all agreed for just those nights when pesto adorned dinner.
I wanted my pesto to be extra tasty this year for those times when my grown children would come home from faraway places. I wanted the memory of "home-in-agreeability" to reign for them. And I wanted enough of it to serve at all occasions – Thanksgiving, Christmas, random weekends, and all birthdays straight through to St. Patty’s Day when the next seedlings are planted. And so I even bought more basil at the farmers’ market when my own plants had exhausted themselves – more basil to make more pesto.
Now every bit of it, all my neatly stacked containers, rot in the warm dark freezer. The kitchen smells acrid and garlicky when I walk into it. I can’t bring myself to open the freezer door and throw it away yet – though it had thawed entirely two days ago. I’ve crossed the threshold of caring whether the power comes on today – my losses are tallied.
I’m not talking about the price of ingredients, a mere number that follows a dollar sign – that’s not what I tally or grieve. That’s not the value I assign to homemade pesto. And I realize there are things far more valuable that I have not lost. But I still think about the extra special effort I put into it this year – early morning treks to obtain quality ingredients – and all for the promise of another season when everyone might come together and agree. Pesto is the taste of agreement. I wonder if the likes of Irene can understand that.
A woman’s heart is crazy and secretive that way – she’ll do so much and spend too much to implant a thing of value in the subconscious storehouse of memory for those who will never witness the effort or know about it or maybe even care about it . . . only, strangely, sense it by tasting . . .
The 1982 Recipe:
2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
2 large garlic cloves
½ cup pine nuts
¾ cup freshly grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
2/3 cup olive oil
Grind it all up together in whatever way you choose – mortar and pestle, or blender. And no, Irene, it's not the same as store-bought.
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