Presto Pesto

Image from La Grange college library

One of the things that I have grown to love nearly above all else is pesto. (And it is especially great when you have the foresight to freeze some of your summer basil bounty. So perhaps this post is a little unfairly tantalizing in February, but I have been hoarding it since September... I’ll remind you again in June how much you love pesto!)

 My large bushy bouquets of basil in my garden were such a source of delight. Pine nut pesto is delicious, but usually a non-local luxury. Plus  many of the pinion pine trees that produce this delicious nut are dying (Boo you, climate change).

1908 Milk truck in America. Image from Wikimedia.

Here in Oklahoma the land is still dotted by orchards of huge old pecan trees. In some cities, like mine, the land has been developed but remnants of the orchards still dot the landscape in mighty towering shady rows. They stand like the crumbling columns of ancient buildings, the bones of former civilizations.  Such a beautiful reminder of the adage that wisdom is planting trees, the shade of which one will never see.

I wonder about what my city was like then- 100 years ago when my land, now one block from a bustling main street, fed cows in a very large dairy for the milk delivered daily by horse drawn cart, to houses with wooden ice boxes and an additional delivery of ice.

Where did the water come from to grow these trees in our frequently dry, often unpredictable, landscape? Did some farmer's daughter carry it one bucketful at a time, for her whole adolescence, maybe through her whole adult life, from the life giving well? For how many long years did she have to wait, to even taste the fruit from her labor? And how astonishing would it be to her that now these nuts are shaken down, skinned, packaged, and pulverized by machine. Perhaps I need to savor them just a bit longer.

Sun dried tomato polenta (Start the night before or morning of. So easy, don't be intimidated)!

• 4 cups of water
• 1 cup of coarse corn meal  (I omitted the Parmesan to save some money)
• 1/2 cup of sun dried tomatoes (free from last summer's garden)

I can buy a small log of polenta at my grocery store for around for Polenta $3.75 or make your own for about $0.75 

Roasted pecan pesto

0.5 lbs of roasted pecans $3 (Local price if you pick them from a free source but take them to a sheller . Lucky lucky me my sweet grandparents had just given me several pounds from their tree that they picked and shelled by hand). For some other posts about my grandparents and my Granny Smith's sweet petite pies go here.

• 6 large handfuls of basil leaves(free from garden) or $2.00
• 0.5 cups olive oil $1
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast 0.25
•  1/2 tsp sea salt

$6.25

So, when I make pesto I love to add a degree of richness to it by first roasting the nuts. Lightly coat them with olive oil and roast in 375 degree oven for about seven minutes or just until they smell pungent but not burned. Sometimes, to save energy, I do this in my tiny toaster oven. Sometimes when I do this, I also almost catch the house on fire, but those incidents are another story...

I have also found there is an unmistakeable but mystifying difference in the taste between pounded pesto and chopped pesto. If you have a mortar and pestle or even the back side of a cup or rolling pin handle crush the basil. Your pesto will be so much more fragrant. If you don't have the time to pound it completely just do it a bit before putting in food processor with other Ingredients.

The nutritional yeast is a powder that can be found at health food stores and is a cheaper (vegan alternative), also rich in B vitamins, alternative to hard cheeses traditionally used. It can be overpowering so use sparingly.

Roasted vegetables

• 1 red pepper (frozen) $1
• 2 summer squash (or about 1 pound of other seasonal squash)$1.50
• 3 large carrots $1.00]]  

$3.50 
*********

Menu total: $10.50 or $1.75/ person

Set broiler to low. Cook squash and carrots for about 7 min and then add pepper and corn for 7 more min until barely browning and blistering. Set aside to cool.

While the veggies are cooling slightly Pan fry the polenta in 1/4 inch slices for 4-5 min each slide with pesto added to the pan about halfway through to warm it. Rub the skins off the vegetables and mix them.
Simple one dish meal.
For more "golden nuggets", ie ultra cheap meals, check out others in our 10 for 10 series.

Impromptu Green Chili Stew

On the 26th we were still snowed in, and really had nowhere to go anyhow. It was a what-can-I-make with-what's-leftover-in-the-cabinet day. Two years ago in Santa Fe I had some amazing green chili stew and it has gnawed at my memory ever since; yeah it was that good.

Lately everyone has been talking about Christmas tamales. Since I grew up in southern California I too miss those Christmas traditions and tastes. I didn't really have the supplies to try tamales, but will be soon- especially since some friends told me how to prepare the meat in the crock pot. (Yum!) So it was actually the thought of those tastes that brought me back to the stew. And yes, I must say, and my Hugger agrees this is an amazing replica.

Zuppa Tuscana (or Soupa Oklahoma) with fruit compote

Swiss chard wins most hardy plant in my garden this year, despite snails and cabbage moths in abundance and very inconsistent watering. I put it in the ground in February and it is still growing strong.  Hurray for my stems of steel! I also love the way it looks, the way it flutes like flowers overflowing in a bouquet. And when my children kneel next to it, and it grows above their heads, it reminds me of the painting by Diego Rivera of the girl with the calla lilies.

Diego Rivera. 1941. Flower seller, girl with the calla lilies.

A simple supper: light fried zucchini, applesauce, and spicy nuts

Some of my earliest and best memories are watching my grandmother cook in her kitchen. Somehow she is the best and, perhaps perplexingly, skinniest southern chef I know. Every meal there were fresh pies, bread, cakes, cookies, or other delightful treats streaming out of the oven. She can take any three ingredients and make something delicious, five and it will be a feast. She is also super savvy and clips coupons for everything. She can tell you the lowest price to get zucchini or any other single item on any given day in three counties.

But one of my favorite things still is her pan fried zucchini or squash. It revels the crispyness of french fries but with an added sweetness. At her Oklahoma house there was always a big garden some country kin or friend was always coming to unload more of their surplus zucchini, as if she didn't have plenty already. So she sliced zealously and stored extra battered squash in the freezer to use throughout the winter.

To me a plateful even by itself is a delightful dinner or it goes with just about everything. So here is a super simple super.

Egg pasta with buffalo sausage and roasted vegetables. Candied oranges.

For the next few days we are doing a ten for $10 series. 10 recipes, service for 6 for $10. Also please check out how you can submit a guest post and be entered to win $20 of stuff from Oklahoma Food Coop (out of staters welcome too) in our submissions section! [Update: This contest has ended. Our winner choose to buy some great yarn from the Oklahoma Food Coop producer Shepherd's cross].

What could be more Oklahoman than a recipe featuring wavin’ wheat and buffalo summer sausage?

Egg pasta

 Every week when I get my package from my good friend it feels like I am opening a present from her family to mine. I know these chickens- my children go and feed them bugs out of their hands. These chickens are pretty pampered pompous bug-eatin', weed scratchin', farm trottin' helpers on my friend's farm. Each of these free-range eggs is an orb of goodness. The shells are so thick in a diverse palate of lovely pastels and the yolks a whole spectrum of bejewled oranges. All unique in size and some even slightly lopsized. Everyone competes to see who gets the green egg (it is really pale green) from the Easter egger ameraucana chickens (also, really it's name). After I wash them I love to hold them in my hand and run my fingers over their smoothness and marvel at their perfection, every time. They are also wonderfully inexpensive and great in oh so many things.        

Recently we decided to make our own pasta! This project is a delightful mess. We modified the recipe from the River Cottage Family Cookbook and had to add a substantial amount of water.

Peach butter, peach ginger chicken, mustard green beans, baked apples

After having a kitchen filled with freshly picked peaches something had to be done with them immediately- eekk! Peaches have a zero tolerance for shelf life so I decided to do some canning. My childhood fears of monitoring an ancient pressure cooker that I was told (nonchalantly) had actually exploded, are certainly not the whole story of canning. Water bath canning is actually pretty easy. Phew, what a relief.

This is a two-part recipe. But so easy, I promise.

Crock pot peach butter with ginger and mint

(c) Can Stock Photo