Too many herbs

M helped me build it.
Isn't he awesome?

This year we have a 4' x 4' raised garden bed, just tall enough to keep it safe from Raggie.  We optimistically planted out bush beans, tomatoes, a bell pepper plant, lettuce seeds, cucumber seeds and some herbs.  Since starting out the garden in mid-March, we have quickly learned the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes, designed and built a cucumber trellis, and jerry-rigged some extensions to our existing tomato cages (see also: indeterminate tomatoes).

While our lettuces did not make it past one harvest -- overshadowed too soon by the over-zealous tomatoes -- and everything else in the garden is still building up to harvest time, our basil plants and flat parsley have been growing like mad since day one.  We harvested and pruned back the basil this weekend, and had to come up with a scheme for putting up eight cups of basil leaves.  The tomatoes are still green and growing, so bruschetta and caprese weren't an option for the weekend.  We also had an ample parsley harvest, and plenty of time to grill this weekend so I whipped up a big batch of pesto (sans cheese) for the freezer and a smaller batch of chimichurri sauce to accompany some grilled steaks.  Yum.

Pesto Genovese, sans cheese

Cheese does not suffer the freezer very well, so we opted to leave it out of the base pesto here.  To serve with pasta, dilute pesto slightly with the pasta cooking water and add Parmesan to taste.

7 cups basil leaves, washed and picked over, no thick stems
10 medium cloves garlic
1 cup pine nuts
1.75 cups olive oil

Blend in food processor until desired texture.  Ours made about 6 cups of pesto, which we packaged in 1/2 cup portions and froze.  We held out one portion for meals this week and tried some with dinner tonight.  I left the salt and pepper out so I could salt it to taste after adding in the cheese, as Parmesan is somewhat salty on its own.

Chimichurri Sauce

2 cups parsley (we used a mix of grocery store curly leaf and garden flat leaf)
2 Tbsp dried oregano
4 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (less if you'd like yours milder)
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine all ingredients except olive oil in bowl of food processor and blend, stopping to scrape down sides
once or twice.  Add oil in steady stream and blend until emulsion forms (or, if you have terrible pour-spout aim like me, in small additions).  Place in a sealed container and allow flavors to mingle for one to two hours before use.