The first day of fall in Colorado

Guess I forgot to post this one, oh well, here it is.

Well here we are, September 22, 2009, the first official day of fall. It actually arrived yesterday when the high temperature was 48 and there was a trace of snow during the day. Tonight promises to get down to 33 or 34 degrees. Brrrrr.

All this is leading up to the fact that this marks the end of gardening season in Colorado. Boo Hoo. On Sunday I harvested all the basil. Turns out I had 5 kinds. That was a lot of plucking leaves and washing. Here is what I did with all that yummy stuff.

Thai basil - washed well, dried with paper towel, stuck in a freezer bag and squeezed out all the air, then into the freezer it went.

Cinnamon Basil - after washing. spread out on a paper towel lined jelly roll pan with a cooling rack inside and stuck it in the oven. Turned the oven light on and in about 24 hours, you have nicely dried basil!

Purple Basil - Saw a good recipe in cooking light for Purple Basil Parmesan biscuits, so I made two batches and froze them. Now we can have yummy remnants of summer in about 20 minutes whenever we need it.

Lemon Basil - Lemon basil is a very nice basil, until you start picking the leaves off of it. Then you discover that that lovely bushy basil plant is more bush than basil. I had big plans for a nice lemon basil pesto for fish, but by the time I had finished plucking, there wasn't enough basil to even make a batch. I'm tossing it in with the Genovese basil and calling it good.

Genovese Basil (the regular kind!) - Lots of this growing this year. I have made a couple batches of pesto and used a lot in marinara sauce, and still had enough left over for 2 cups of pesto (tossed those in 4 oz cups and froze) and a tray of basil cubes!

Love the basil cubes. Just put your basil in the food processor and chop, then add enough olive oil to get it to come together. Spoon into an ice cube tray and freeze. When frozen wrap in plastic wrap, then foil and store in a zip top bag. Toss a cube into red sauce, soup, stew, or make pesto anytime during the winter by adding garlic and parm to a couple of cubes.

Tonights agenda, get the tomatoes either out of the garden or cover well and hope for the best. It's supposed to get warm by Friday!