I'm a Cheater

Apologies for the blog hiatus. Rest assured, I have tons of backlogged pictures to post.  But first I'll start with a confession. I'm a basil cheater. There, I said it. The past two years we have tried to grow basil from seed and both times we got abysmal success rates and very slow growing seedlings. So, one day when we were at Lowes, I spotted....basil plants! I picked up four, and took them home to the garden and no one was the wiser. Well, until now.

Any lingering guilt I felt over adulterating our garden with store-bought plants quickly evaporated as these basil plants flourished and started producing tons of sweet, sweet basil leaves.

Basil leaves that can be made into pesto:

I usually go with a super simple Food Network pesto recipe.  Just basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and parm, with salt and pepper to taste. 

And...so good I forgot to take the finished picture.  I'll include it later - basil is almost ready for a second batch: