It’s hard to tell from this picture, but that’s a beautiful, whopping, 3 cups of fresh basil. Three packed cups, which is probably the most basil I’ve ever had at one time. It’s a ginormous pile that we were given at our trip to Whole Foods! How cool is that?
Here’s the story: we were poking around the plants outside the store, admiring the basil. They had extremely vibrant basil plants. The nice lady who works in the flower section was out there, too. We’ve already got lots of basil planted in pots, but it’s at the point where I really can’t pinch them back anymore and expect them to survive. So we chitchatted a bit and then went in to do our shopping, plantless. The next thing I knew, the plant lady was giving us this huge bag of fresh basil from pinching back the store plants! She said she couldn’t make anymore pesto and nobody at the store would take anymore basil either.
When we got home and got all the groceries put away, I ate a few leaves then I made pesto. It turned out to be the best pesto I’ve ever made! I’m convinced it’s all because it was given to us so generously.
Thank you, Whole Foods Plant Lady!
And…guess what? The next post is going to be another book contest. So get ready!
Happy Almost Weekend!
12 Comments
Awesome, how lovely of her to give you the basil.
that’s awesome. also, a lot of basil. i’m wondering what else i can do with basil other than just make pesto, since i have 10 plants at this point that are all doing very well. hope we get to see what you make with this!
I love having so much of one ingredient because it forces me to be creative. I’ve been the worst cookbook recipe tester lately but I’m hoping that now that my new site is up and running I’ll be back to being productive.
That’s fantastic! I love pesto, I can’t wait until there’s basil everywhere and I get to use it all the time.
What a great random act of gardening kindness. How could anybody get tired of pesto? That blows my mind. Congratulations to you!
I love basil its my absolute favorite herb! It’s delicous in everything!
http://whatyourmommadidntknow.blogspot.com/
Wow–that is amazing! You are one lucky Whole Foods shopper
) I wish I had room to grow something (I have tried herbs in my apt…they die asap 
( )!
And yay for a cookbook give away! I never win anything, but I always get excited to try, for some reason…
Courtney
second time this week that I’m super moved by the kindness of a stranger to a member of the ppk. it’s reassuring to see people don’t always suck. yay for you and yay for her!
Yay for lots of basil! And double yay for pesto (yum!!)
OK so we had a basil plant in the front of the house which died (or so I thought). So we purchased another plant and put it on the side of the house.
Well that puppy grew like a weed (that was not a complaint). We were told by folks who grow this stuff to snip off the flower as it shows itself. No problemo.
We did that and would throw the flowers on the ground right there. Whoa! Someone forgot to tell us that within those flowers are what? Oh yeah, seeds. So now I have like a katrillion(its a word cuz I just made it up) baby basil plants growing on the side of my house.
And get this. Where that plant dies in the front of the house, there are now a kazillion baby basil plants there as well. Who knew?
ooh.. score… gifting basil must be some major good karma… I’ve had such bad luck with our basil plants!! My most recent is surviving but barely!
Balil is an essetial for my kitchen, and even though everyone seems to have it growing here, I find mine doesn’t like the Roman summers much. After 5 years, this is the first year I have a a good crop, and I treat them luke spoiled children. I only clip them if they get flowers. A good way to save basil is to trim them down before it gets too cold and then chop it all up and freeze them