We lost the battle of pinching back the flowers on the basil months ago. It didn’t turn out so bad though, as the basil reseeded itself, in pretty much every nearby pot. Even the original parent plants, whose older leaves get tough and pale after flowering, have grown a few fresh leaves since then. Many of the new plants have ended up a lovely hybrid between the purple and sweet varieties we were originally growing.

It really takes more than one or two plants of most herbs to support a kitchen. And other things than you may eat or otherwise kill your plants. Two armies of caterpillars ate through all four of our parsley plants. This is all that’s left.

So we’re back to buying parsley from the store for now. And parsley are difficult to start from seed.

Anyway, we’ve been making good use of all the basil, mainly by making pesto. Getting a food processor has been instrumental in this. Despite being often disappointed by pesto dishes at restaurants, it’s quite easy, although the ingredients are fairly expensive: fresh basil, pine nuts, parmesan, garlic and olive oil. (Parsley and walnuts are not acceptable substitutes.)

We toss the pesto with pasta, and we make chicken pesto pizza. I used to make the dough by hand, but we found that the local grocery store’s bakery makes a better version. I blame their success on letting the dough rise overnight.