Brown Butter and Pesto Pasta

This is an incredibly simple recipe but one that I find myself making when I am in a hurry.

Ingredients:
1 lb spaghetti, cooked
1/2 cup pesto (recipe below)
1 stick butter
1/2 cup ricotta
your favorite cheese for grating, Parmesan, Romano,etc.

Boil pasta, allow to drain over sink in colander. Meanwhile, melt and cook butter over medium heat in pasta pot until it foams and begins to brown. Don't burn it! Switch off heat, and stir in pesto and ricotta, add pasta. Serve with your favorite grating cheese and maybe some crushed red pepper.

When I make pesto, I put a bunch of basil, and about 3-4 ounces of Parmesan, cubed, in the food processor with about 2/3 cup pine nuts. I add salt and pepper, plus olive oil as I pulse. I freeze it in portions in a cupcake tin and use as needed.

Summer Vegetable CSA Week 6 -- Fruit CSA Week 1

Week 6 was a beautiful week for weather and vegetables. We received basil, green leaf lettuce, mint, 3 green onions, 2 bunches of radishes, 8 cucumbers, 6 squash, 2 swiss chard, 4 ears of corn, a missing pint of grape tomatoes, and two bunches of carrots.

The fruit share contained 2 pints of blueberries and a 1/2 pint of raspberries.

I'm still catching up on life after the breakage of our stove, the internet constantly dying for no reason, and my beautiful dear child dumping a drink on my laptop. I've also had lovely weather to distract me, but I've also been busy preserving and making jam.

Most of these things are long gone, I can tell you what I made:
Blueberries were went into a salad and a few jars of small batch jam.
Raspberries were frozen for future misdeeds.
The basil made sauce, meatballs, and bruschetta.
Green onions were frozen and used in bruschetta along with tomatoes.
Lettuce, cucumbers, and radishes were for salad.
Other cukes are being made into pickles.
I roasted most of the squash for lasagna or side dishes.
Swiss chard was a side dish.
The corn was used in my First Time Grilling Corn Ever.
The carrots last forever, so they are stored in my fridge.

That's what happens to a week's worth of vegetables! It is kind of neat to look back and say how everything was used and to see how little waste we made, I think it was a successful week in the kitchen.

Summer Vegetable CSA Week 5

Week 5: 2 Kohlrabi, 2 beets, fennel, 8 assorted squash, 2 basil bunches, arugula, peas, 2 bunches radishes, 6 pickling cucumbers, scapes and lettuce. I'm planning on baking with the zucchini and roasting what I don't use as a side dish. The arugula will become pesto as well. The beets are already chips. Kohlrabi isn't my favorite vegetable but I was thinking I might make a cheese sauce and serve it as a side dish, since it tastes somewhat like broccoli. I am hoping to make and can some relish this week with the cucumbers. Here is where the season really begins to pick up and I dedicate a lot of time to preserving, which is always appreciated in the late fall and winter.