Making Pesto, Cooking Pizza and Reading ” Common Table”

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MAKING  Made pesto using just harvested basil and other simple ingredients. I picked and rinsed the leaves then blitzed them with extra virgin olive oil, lightly roasted pine nuts, pecorino (a strong sheep) cheese and garlic. Smells wonderful, tastes delicious. This pesto doesn’t keep for very long, but we’ll use it on pizzas tonight and on pasta tomorrow. It never lasts for long because it tastes so good.

I was a bit surprised to read that bought pesto has vegetable oil, pine nuts, garlic and pecorino cheese plus milk, salt, potato flakes, sugar and acidity regulator(575). Try making your own. So easy, so tasty, so fresh.

COOKING  This yeasty pizza dough  rose nicely as it was a warm day. Later, we rolled out the dough and made a variety of pizzas with several different toppings, including some of the pesto I made earlier. Delicious, quick to cook and a treat for us plus some leftovers for tomorrow.

READING    “Common Table” written by Janice Marriott and Virginia Pawsey, two New Zealanders who were at school together and met again later in life and began corresponding by letter, which make up this book.  The co-authors write about their shared interest in food and their diverse lives and different challenges, as one lives on an isolated farm and the other in the city. Warm, often very funny, scattered with recipes and astute observations about the people around them, this is a book about two old friends adjusting to their changing lives and expectations.

I enjoyed this book so much I have hunted down and ordered their previous book, Common Ground, based on their shared passion for gardening.

Today is Meditate in a Garden Day, which sounds like a lovely thing to do, so make time to settle, relax and meditate in a garden.

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