Herb-Infused Butter and Oil

Wow!! It sure has been a long time since my last blog post! I would like to sincerely apologize to all of my readers for my absence. For quite a while after I started my new job, I was working 60 hours a week, it went back to normal for a couple of weeks, and then I was right back to working 60 hours again. Not only did my blogging suffer, I no longer had the time or energy to go to the gym and I gained back 20 of the pounds that I had worked so hard to lose.  :-(  But, I left that job, as a result of several issues I had with the level of cleanliness in the kitchen (or lack thereof) and the way the owner and management treated the other employees, so am taking some time to recoup from the long work weeks and get back into doing everything I was doing before!

Funny enough, I actually had this blog post typed up and ready to go last week, was just waiting until I took some more pictures, but Microsoft Word crashed and lost the entire document. Strangely, the two documents I typed up AFTER that were saved just fine, but I didn't have a single word of what I had typed up for this. I looked in all of my temporary files and Recovery files, to no avail. Since then, I've been kind of busy, so it took me a little bit to remember everything I had said so that I could type it up again. Stinkin’ technology, it always fails when you need it most!

This blog post is really special to me. Not because of the recipe included, but because it’s the first one I've done in a long time and I've learned a lot about one of the local businesses in the Green Bay area, and I am excited to share it with all of you!

Ledgeview Gardens has been around for several years, and they have some of the best, freshest produce I've eaten. In the summer months, they have plenty of garden space outside and grow a plethora of fruits, vegetables, and herbs in addition to the farm fresh eggs and free-range chicken they sell. I can even buy my squash blossoms from them, instead of scouring the entire market only to come up empty-handed! But, the very best part about Ledgeview Gardens (for me anyways) is that they also have a fair amount of fresh produce even in the wintertime!! After the regular growing season, until around Christmas, you can buy red and yellow beefsteak tomatoes, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, pole beans, a couple varieties of lettuce, garlic, basil, parsley, English cucumbers, winter squash, three different kinds of sweet potatoes, the farm-fresh eggs, and the free-range chicken. After Christmas, they close down to clean out the greenhouse and getting everything ready for the next growing season, and then you’re able to start buying fresh produce again in the middle of May. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am always thoroughly disgusted with the “fake tomatoes” they sell in the supermarkets, so this place is a godsend for me!

As if it wasn't enough that they have this stuff available, their customer service is stellar! The first day I actually drove out to their farm, Darren was kind enough to show me around their facility and explain to me how everything works. Then, I brought my neighbors later that day, and he also gave them a tour and talked to them about everything he had talked to me about earlier. This was especially great, because my neighbors and I had just been talking about cleaning out my spare bedroom and making it into a greenhouse, so that we could have all kinds of fresh vegetables all year long. We had thought we were going to go with a soil method, but after talking to Darren and his dad, Joe, we’re looking at alternative methods – hydroponics and aquaponics. They use the hydroponic method in their greenhouse for the off-season months, and so they were extremely knowledgeable about what we could do in our homes in, but they also know about aquaponics and have been very helpful in helping us to understand what we need to do to get ready for all of it. I have since been there a few times, and they are always happy to answer any new questions I have about setting up a system in my own home and pointing me in the right direction to go about finding the supplies I’ll need.

If you are in the Green Bay area, I definitely recommend looking up Ledgeview Gardens! However, in the summer months, they are much more easily accessible, as they also sell their produce at a couple of the farmer’s markets. But, they are also happy to have you come out to their farm. The only thing I can think of that would make them better… If they started making and/or selling real bacon!  ;-)

What better way to showcase the fresh basil I bought at Ledgeview Gardens than to infuse it in some butter and oil to use later?! I love infusing herbs into oil, because they last a little bit longer and you can drizzle them on top of many kinds of dishes to complement their flavors. This would be great for another recipe I was going to be making...

¼ lb. (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

½ c. olive or canola oil

Fresh basil, cilantro, parsley, etc.

For the butter: Place the softened butter in a small bowl. If using basil, stack all of the leaves together, roll them up, and cut them into a chiffonade; for other herbs, roughly chop them. Add the herb/herbs to the butter and mix to thoroughly combine; add more herbs, to taste, if you would like more of the flavor. The butter can be used right away or stored in the refrigerator to maintain freshness.

For the oil: Place the leaves of whichever herb/herbs you’re using in the jar of a blender, pour the oil over the leaves, and pulse the mixture until the leaves are chopped into small pieces. If you want more herb flavor, add more leaves to achieve the desired flavor.

Fresh Basil Pesto

If you know me at all, you know that I LOVE basil. And is it really so hard to understand why?! Basil is so fresh-tasting and delicious that almost anything you add it to automatically tastes fresher and better! If you need convincing of this, get yourself some fresh basil and try this: take approximately 10 basil leaves and roll and slice them thinly, then sprinkle it over the top of a plain frozen cheese pizza. It won't taste like any other frozen pizza you've ever had, that's for sure!
Even though I like using the basil leaves fresh off the plant by themselves, one of my favorite things to do with fresh basil is to make pesto. The best thing about this is that it preserves well, so you can keep it for a year and enjoy the same fresh herb taste in the middle of winter that you could in the middle of summer! After you have prepared the fresh pesto, all you have to do is fill the compartments of an ice cube tray with the mixture and freeze it until it's solid. When the pesto is frozen, just pop it out of the ice cube trays and place the frozen blocks into a freezer-safe zip top bag to keep in the freezer for whenever you need or want them. You could wrap the frozen blocks of pesto in plastic wrap before placing in the freezer bag, if you would like, and that will help hold it all together, but it's not necessary.
Now, after you've made the fresh pesto, there are countless things you can do with it. Mix it into fresh-cooked pasta before adding the sauce... Mix it with mayonnaise to use on sandwiches... Use it as a sauce on pizzas... Serve with crostini... Etc.
The only thing that I have to say is this... Pine nuts are DISGUSTING!! If I wanted my food to taste like a pine tree, I would go gnaw off some of the tree and just eat that. I don't know which crazy individual discovered that pine nuts are edible and then decided it would be a good idea to eat them, but it's just wrong. Pine nuts are just what you might presume - they're the seeds from inside pine cones. Someone goes and breaks open pine cones to harvest the little seeds from inside of them so that the delusional people who are told how yummy they are will eat them and then disillusion themselves further by convincing themselves that they taste good. Who are these people?! They are just wrong! I ALWAYS use walnuts, which ARE yummy, in my pesto, and I've never had bad results. :-)


½ c. walnuts
3 - 4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 - 5 oz. fresh basil leaves
½ tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 - 1½ c. olive oil
1 c. freshly grated Parmesan

Place the garlic in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and process until garlic is coarsely chopped. Add the walnuts to the bowl and pulse again until the walnuts are chopped and mixed with the garlic, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the basil leaves, salt, and pepper in batches; with the processor running, slowly pour the olive oil into the bowl through the feed tube and process until the pesto is thoroughly pureed. Add the Parmesan and puree for a minute.