Saturday Harvest

What a great way to start the weekend. Two more cups of raspberries (maybe enough now to make some jam!), an echinacea, more pretty sunny flowers, and a bunch of basil. The basil in the garden in going absolutely bonkers. The bushes are just thrilled to be out there. I probably need to change the earth in the window box or something because for the last two years the basil has been unhappy in there. But maybe I'll just ignore it because I have so much of it outside!
I picked a bunch to freeze and figure every time the bush is overloaded with too many leaves I'll just have to pick some, freeze it and not worry about buying any more.
All you have to do is wash the leaves and pretend you are rolling a cigar in plastic wrap.
Leaves:
Ready to freeze:
When you need fresh basil, just take it out of the freezer, chop and voila! This technique works well with parsley and dill also, both of which I have in the garden. Hopefully I'll have oodles of herbs come winter.
Since I do have a small parsley bush, and I have ground meat stashed in the fridge, I decided to give Ellen Emlen's meat balls a go:I did: a cup of ground beef, cup of ground pork, 1/3c chopped onion, 1T. chopped parsley, 1/2t. white pepper, 1t salt, 1/2 t fresh grated nutmeg. 1 small lemon peel and juice, maybe a cup of bread in the milk, and 1 large egg. (eggs back then were smaller so you don't need as much today).
My beautiful parsley and an onion.

Dinner with some kale. Yum. Don't leave out the lemon. As weird as it sounds - it needs to be in there. Fry in butter - or whatever you want.