Garden Fuss

Me & Basil Just before the big chill Basil Gone Bye Bye ~ It's Pesto Time The bitter cold has set in much too soon for most of us in this region. It's just the second week in October and a Minnesota ski parks has opened sooner than another parks in the country with real (manmade) snow.... With the rain that has just started to make it out of the atmosphere in the last couple hours I'm thinking the snow won't last very long. However the very cold day and night time temps has been conducive to flake making and the killing of all essential tasty things in my and other gardens around town. 
Speaking of casualties, our basil was almost caught and destroyed by the too cold temps. However,I raced out snatched the whole plants from the ground and proceeded with removing the not so succulent leaves and washing them. Since the cold makes me really lethargic I waited a couple days to process the leaves into what you see here

Last month I jumped at an opportunity to assist with a Solar Cooking demonstration; a skill share that I would be assisting Amy Gooder from Rumble In The Kitchen with. This particular skill share was part of the Como Cookout. Which combined a potluck, tomato tasting, classes on seed saving, herb preservation, fermentation, canning, and a host of other events and activities sponsored by the NE/SE Local Food Resource Hubs. If you have visited my blog a time or two you can see that cooking and baking are my “it things” besides gardening. Before I went to the Como Cookout I had close to no knowledge about cooking outdoors using the sun. Last winter break after a particularly heated discussion with my son regarding wasted opportunities to “fry an egg” on the concrete (my fault of course); we made up by a unanimous decision to peruse Youtube on the subject. We found several videos to fuel our new passion for extreme outdoor cooking. Including videos showing how-to use a car to bake choc