Harvest time

Everytime around this time of year it is Harvest time at the Karipidis Residence. Ever since we moved into a house back on Granger Avenue, my parents have kept a simple vegetable garden with all the essential Greek vegetables every household should have on hand. Now that we moved from the Junction to the St.Andrew's Community my parents continue their harvesting tradition. Back at the old house our garden grew tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini and your standard array of herbs. The people who owned the new house before we did build a beautiful patio that has built-in herb beds where my Mom's herbs grow in an abundance. This year such as last year my Mom's basil was overgrowing. Of course my Mom was delighted with all the basil she had in her herb beds but was overwhelmed with what to do with so much basil. I suggested we make pesto. And so we did. With the help of my handy dandy food processor we made enough pesto to last use at least 3 to 4 dishes worth of the basilly goodness.

VENETIA'S PESTO

10 cups of basil and parsley combined leaves

3 tbsp minced garlic

1 cup of pine nuts

3 cups of walnuts

300 g Parmesan cheese

juice of 1/2 lemon

olive oil (a lot)

salt

You will want to use a heavy duty food processor or blender to prepare the pesto so that all the ingredients blend well together. You may have to make 2 separate batches at a time and mix the two together in a large bowl at the end of the process. We started by chopping the nuts first and poured a good helping of olive oil to start to create a good paste. Then we slowly added the herbs small batches at a time followed by the cheese. When we saw that the paste was getting too thick we added the lemon juice, minced garlic, salt and more olive oil. Once the ingredients are mixed well together transfer the pesto to sterilised mason jars and refrigerate.