Garden pesto

The basil is finally starting to come in a bit more quickly, so the first round of pesto had to happen.

First, I picked and washed a large pile of basil leaves.


I did not have pine nuts, nor was I going to the store just for pine nuts, so we have walnuts and garlic ready to be blitzed.


And I apparently skipped a few steps - added the basil, added the olive oil, added the Parm cheese...and here we go.


Tossed about 1/2 of this with an insane amount of pasta on Saturday night. Will save the rest in the freezer or for most pesto applications in the near future.

Bagels!

Week 2 of the home bagel bakery. I made a batch last weekend that went pretty well, relying on a recipe linked from Slate. I made a few tweaks this week - some structural tweaking (including changing the sugar/salt mix) - and some palate-aesthetic changes - half plain, half garlic dill.

Here is the kneaded dough ready for its rise

And the trays of formed bagels - still need to work on our technique on this front


Boil for a minute...


And then rest while the others get their turn in the tub


Bake for 30 min and you're good to go.


This batch turned out better than last week's batch - no weird sweet taste on day 2, better consistency. They were a bit smaller and some of that may be attributable to the slightly increased amounts of salt slowing down the yeast. But all in all, still v. good and way cheaper than buying.