The fresh scent of summer

It may not look like much, but this freshly made pesto brought the lovely smell of a summer garden into my kitchen on this bitterly cold winter day:

Each summer, James grows basil in a planter on the patio and my green Adirondack chair is placed next to it. I adore relaxing in that chair, watching the bees hop from blossom to blossom and inhaling the fresh scent of basil.

For many years I have made a pasta dish with pesto, andouille sausage, chicken, and jar pesto, and we liked it just fine. But when James brought home fresh pesto last fall that was made by the staff at MacKenzie-Childs using basil grown in the farm's garden, it was glaringly obvious just how much better fresh pesto tastes. When I made pesto using the last of our basil and used it in the andouille-chicken pasta recipe, we were wowed by the greatly enhanced flavor. No more jar pesto for us.

Now that it is winter, I am fortunate to buy fresh basil in the produce department at Wegmans (the world's greatest grocery store). I admit that making pesto is a pain in the tookus and messy as hell, but it is so worth it. I've been experimenting with different nuts because pine nuts, which are traditionally used in pesto, are practically worth their weight in gold. The recipe card from MacKenzie-Childs suggested substituting walnuts or almonds. I first tried the walnuts but none of us cared much for that option, so today I used almonds and I think we will like that version much better.

And just how cold is it? When we got up this morning, it was minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of you don't want to know. School was canceled due to the extreme cold and the high temperature barely managed to reach 4. But it was a gorgeous sunny day, and when I looked at the bright blue sky and took a whiff of the fresh pesto, it almost seemed like summer.