FreshMint - Keep It That Way!

I absolutely love the smell of fresh mint and the way the velvety leaves feel between my fingers, almost like a nice scarf you could twirl and play with absentmindedly. However, I find it hard to keep my mint fresh and soft and velvety. I don’t have that many recipes that call for fresh mint, but just when I want to add a little mint to my fruit salad or top off a cloud of whipped cream, I find my once beautiful, fragrant mint has browned and shriveled in the bag or water bath in which I’d left it. Humph.

Recently I learned a couple of tips to keep the leaves fresh and flavorful for more than a day or so. It’s not very time consuming but these techniques go a long way for preservation.

Fresh Mint in the Fridge

1) Rinse your mint as soon as you get it home and lay it out on a towel to dry.
2) Separate the leaves.
3) With another towel or paper towel blot the mint to really get the excess water off the leaves.
4) Then pinch off the individual leaves and layer them in an airtight container. Store these in your refrigerator.

Fresh Mint in your Freezer

Follow the same steps above up to step 3. Once you’ve blotted away the excess moisture, lay the springs of mint on one side of a paper towel and fold the other side over. Put the folded paper towel in a Ziplock and squeeze out the excess air. Fold the bag over and place it flat in the freezer. You will have fresh mint whenever you need it.

Beautiful Basil

When our CSA boxes came last week, I had a hard time extracting my nose from the sweet, pungent basil bouquet we received. It was big enough to cradle like an armful of beauty pageant roses, and cradle it I did...briefly. Then I got to work on making some delicious pesto with both basil and arugula.

Basil Arugula Pesto

I like to do all of this in my Cuisinart in the interest of time. All the pesto can be done to taste, depending on what you want to pair it with. A dipping sauce might be a little lighter whereas the pesto I like to use for my pasta and chicken has a bit of heat from the garlic and arugula.

2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup lightly packed basil leaves plus 5-6 arugula leaves
¼ cup + lightly toasted pine nuts
¼ cup + freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano
½ cup good tasting olive oil

Combine garlic and salt in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the basil and pine nuts and pulse until finely minced, then add the parmesan and do the same. Use your spatula and scrape all the goodies off the side of the bowl before adding the olive oil. While the blade is moving, slowly pour in the olive oil and just run the food processor until the pesto is to your desired consistency.

Pesto Pasta

Prepare your pasta to al dente and reserve some of your pasta water (a ½ cup or so). Put your strained pasta back in the pot and pour in your reserved pasta water. This will keep the noodles from sticking. Add in ¾ c to a cup of your fresh pesto and toss the pasta.

I grilled chicken breasts, cut them up and then finished them on the stove with a little pesto as well.


I topped the fettuccini and pesto chicken with some of those beautiful little tomatoes from our CSA shares. Voila!

Banana Zucchini Blackberry Bread

Another delicious use for all that zucchini lying around the house...

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup salted butter, room temperature
1 egg
2 large ripe bananas
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/4 cup milk or almond milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
6-8 blackberries, cut into thirds

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a standard muffin tin or line cups with paper liners.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and mix in completely.
3. Mash bananas in separate bowl and mix in milk and cinnamon. Add in zucchini.
4. Whisk together flour, baking soda and baking powder in separate bowl.
5. Starting and ending with flour mixture, alternate adding flour and bananas to butter and sugar. Only mix until just incorporated.
6. Fold in walnuts and then gently fold in the blackberries
7. Fill muffin cups with batter and sprinkle tops with demerara sugar.
8. Bake 18-20 minutes.

*I made little breads instead of muffins so drop the temp down to 350 and bake for 35-40 minutes. Yummy!

“Real Food, Grown Locally!” We’ll take it!

This is our journey in enjoyment and experimentation with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at the workplace – so far it’s really catching on! Most of us have never participated in a CSA before so we decided to blog about our excitement, confusion, tips and discoveries related to the farm fresh bounty that is delivered to us each week.

For our group it started with a lecture given by a local farmer and CSA organizer – Farmer Donna. She hooked some of us immediately with the idea that we could eat fresh fruits and veggies that were harvested the day before they were delivered to us; she reeled in a few more with the notion that CSA participants know exactly where their produce is coming from and can trust the integrity of ORGANIC labeling from her farm; and the skeptics signed up after they tasted real home-grown tomatoes and oranges and saw what beautiful, bountiful produce came in just one box a week.

We’re learning as we go, but one thing is for sure - we’re helping each other, helping the community and eating better together.