We planted quite a few basil plants this year and actually managed to not kill them immediately! We harvest one of the larger plants last night and made a big batch of pesto up for dinner and freezing for later. It turned out really nicely, I never thought we’d ever have enough basil to do pesto, but here you have it.

Fresh Pesto

1 bottle of olive oil (500ml)
1 cup shredded fresh Parmesan cheese (obviously omit if you are doing a vegan version, J and I compromised on this batch)
Juice of 2 lemons
1 1/2 cups pine nuts
8 cloves of garlic
8-10 cups of basil leaves

Put everything in the blender and blend until smooth. You may need to blend the basil leaves in batches to make space for more in the blender. We added them in large handfuls at a time until we had a taste we were happy with. We used the whole bundle pictured above, stems removed.

Delicious, and the colour was great!