Tag Archives: pesto

Getting Festive with Garlic

I made it to the Mohawk Valley Garlic and Herb Festival in Little Falls, NY, known more often as the Garlic Festival.  Unfortunately, I did not take many pictures.  Also, I am feeling quite tired and a bit headachy and stomach achy (oh, sure, “achy” is a word, but “headachy” is not, at least according to my Chromebook).  I know, what a big baby I am.  But regular readers are used to my whining.  On with the blog post.

I really should have taken more than one picture of him.

The tagline for the Festival is Eat, Stink and Be Merry, and this was perhaps the merriest guy there.  He was handing out mints for people who had sampled too much garlic.  As a matter of fact, he is one of my usual suspects for the murder mysteries I write and present (not in that costume, of course).   I was delighted to see him.

These were actually the stinkiest.

My great niece Evie was anxious to ride on the horse-drawn carriage.  I did not  ride but was happy to sit in the shade and wait for them.  I tried to get a good picture on their return but was not quite quick enough.  Still, I thought this one was good enough for inclusion.

I did not purchase any garlic but got a jar of cilantro pesto.  I had a sample and it is yummy.  Who thought there would be a pesto I would like better than basil pesto?  I may have to do another blog post about that when I eat some of it.  Pesto Pasta might make a good headline.

It was the first time in several years I had been to the Garlic Festival, so I was happy my sister Cheryl had invited me to come along with her and her daughters and granddaughter. Family and garlic, it was a good day.

 

Pizza with Pesto on Tasty Tuesday

How about a Tasty Tuesday post instead of my usual Tired or Bad Attituesday?  I just made a yummy flat bread pizza and I think I can come up with 200 or so words about it.

Steven got me some nice flat bread last week, and over the weekend I had the idea of making a flat bread pizza.   Accordingly, I went to the store on Sunday and purchased Dino’s sausage (from Utica, NY; just to give my post some local flair), fresh mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese.  I lazily picked the washed and sliced mushrooms.  It did not seem to be much difference in price between that and the whole ones. I already had black olives and pesto.  The pesto was homemade: I made it in my blender with oil, basil, garlic and whatever else I felt like throwing in at the time (I don’t remember now what that was; this stuff keeps a long time in the fridge).

I cooked all the sausage on Sunday, knowing it would be good for more than one pizza, so I was all set in that respect today.  While the oven pre-heated, I grated mozzarella.  After spraying the pizza pan with no-stick, I put the flat bread on it and spread it with pesto.  I arranged sausage and mushrooms, sliced the black olives over them, then covered the whole with cheese.  I baked it for ten minutes.

YUMMY!!!  My Sunday pizza was made with the same recipe, if you can call it that (I suppose in my blog I will call it what I like).  I’m not sure if I have shared this recipe before, but there is every chance I will share it again sometime.  Perhaps I will make some variations on the theme or maybe take pictures of the work in progress and the finished product.  As always, I hope you’ll stay tuned.

 

Scattered Saturday Before the Boilermaker

I confess, I didn’t have a whole lot of scatter, because I mostly hydrated and rested before tomorrow’s 15K run (it’s really a road race, but since I will be far back in the pack and more interested in making silly jokes than getting a fast time, I can’t say I’ll be racing).  For those of you just tuning in, it is the Utica Boilermaker Road Race, a pretty damn exciting event in the Mohawk Valley.

My plan was to go for at least one walk, so I was disappointed to hear thunder followed by torrential rain this morning.  Then it stopped.  Cool.  I wrote some post cards and walked to the post office, taking the long way back.  It has continued to thunder, rain, then stop for most of the day.  I may go for an evening walk during one of the stops but no promises.  I got a little more exercise walking from the second floor down to the basement and back doing laundry.  It is so pleasant to have most of my clothes clean so that I have a choice of what to wear (of course the perfect thing to wear in an given situation is usually the one thing that is still dirty, but you’ll have that).

In addition to doing laundry, I read an Agatha Christie book (I adore Agatha Christie), worked on my lines for The Tempest, futzed around on Facebook, and wrote a very little on my novel.

I left the house one other time so far, to get my hair cut at the Hot Spot Salon and Spa in Herkimer.  My stylist, Claire, nicely got me in, even though I did not call till yesterday afternoon.  She is way cool.  She did my hair the same as last time, very short.  She said it seems my hair likes to be short.  I thought that was a good way of putting it.  I like it short, because it is easy that way.  As another hairdresser once observed about me, I am the sort of person who cannot be bothered spending too much time on my hair (for another reason, however much time I take, I never seem to get the good results others do).  I would post a selfie of me and my new hair, but I’ve taken off my earrings, and I don’t like to appear in public without earrings.

Back home, I started dinner early, because we intend to go to bed early.  I had put eggplant in the crock pot this morning (ought I to have mentioned that earlier?  Oh well).  Now I made pesto, grated parmesan cheese, sauteed asparagus, and cooked angel hair pasta (my favorite).  My pesto is perhaps not real pesto (I don’t use a recipe), but I call it pesto, because it is fun to say “pesto pasta” (try it).  I put garlic, fresh basil, grated parmesan (I grated enough to put some in the pesto as well as some over the pasta), and oil in the blender and blend.  It turned out pretty good.

And that brings us to the present moment.  My stomach still continues knotty from Boilermaker nerves.  These will continue, no doubt, until the race actually starts.  More specifically, when I cross the starting line and am on my way.  Then it’s run for the beer!  Go me!  Happy Saturday, everyone!