food day friday: blueberry ice cubes

Man, I've gotten a lot more use out of these baby food freezer containers (post baby food) than I ever thought I would!

Put two, three, four (depending on size) blueberries in ice cube trays.

fill with water. freeze.

blueberry ice cubes served with lemonade.

Just in time for July 4th.

Food Day Friday: freezing fresh basil

We love eating pesto.

Last year I had all these grand ideas about the multitudes of basil we'd have in the garden. and all the pesto we'd be whipping up in the kitchen. not a single basil plant survived in last year's garden. no multitudes of leaves. no leaves at all.

This year I planted 4 basil seeds instead of 2 ... Then just to hedge my bets, I bought 2 basil plants at wal-mart. There was no room in the garden so they are in a planter in the driveway (optimum spot for exactly 6 hours of sun a day -- I'm dreaming of multitudes of basil again)

We currently have 2 healthy growing basil plants in the actual garden (from the seeds I planted) AND almost 6 from the two pots I bought.

the planter basil needed a harvest. so I made basil butter. that helped.

a few days later ... lots of big leaves ready to be picked.

I decided to pick everything that was ready and I'd freeze them.

This is the method of freezing I decided on.

I picked and rinsed all the leaves to get any dirt off them (this would be a good time to have a salad spinner) I ended up having 8 loosely packed cups. Perfect. That's how big my blender is - 8 cups.

This is what the plants looked like 3 days after the great harvest. You can tell there are already a few leaves that could be picked.

I put 1 tablespoon of olive oil in for every cup of basil. Next time, I'll probably use less olive oil. (maybe. I haven't decided yet)

puree.

I put the puree in my baby food freezer containers. (score. I'm so glad I still have those) If you don't have baby food freezer containers you can use ice cube trays and cover with plastic wrap. My 8 cups of basil and 8 tablespoons of olive oil produced almost 8 ounces of puree.

freeze. remove puree from tray and put in freezer bag.

I'm sure all of these cubes will be made into pesto. (Our Sam's Club has a great buy on pine nuts) Now I just need to start looking at pesto recipes for my already proportioned quantities.

EDIT: this is what a friend does with her basil and pesto. Good alternative if you don't have ice trays (or baby food trays)

I freeze pesto in muffin tins (spray with cooking spray first) and put the "pesto muffins" in freezer bags.

The large muffin tins are a good size for a dinner and the mini-muffin tins work great to pop into a pot of tomato sauce or anywhere else you want a blast of basil.