Basil to PESTO! From Plant to Plate.

hi everybody Welcome Back To Living Traditions Homestead well today is a beautiful day to do some harvesting and putting things up for the winter or for the rest of the year one of the things that I absolutely love to grow well you guys know how much I like to grow herbs that's like one of my things one of my favorite things and one of the herbs that I absolutely love to grow is basil because our family loves pesto we eat pesto on lots of different things we're actually going to have pesto with our dinner tonight so today I'm going to take you into the greenhouse we're going to do quite a big Harvest of Basil we're going to take it in the house and I'm going to teach you how to make pesto and then I am going to bring you along for me preparing dinner for tonight which is pesto pasta but you may already know that we are doing the keto diet or keto eating low carb high fat and protein so today I'm going to share with you kind of our noodle hack of how we're going to get around eating noodles with carbohydrates in them and still feel like we're having pasta so first off let's go into to the greenhouse and I can show you just how gorgeous our basil has become it's definitely ready for a nice Harvest now not too long ago we did a video where we gave you guys a tour of our fantastic Greenhouse everything is doing so well our pepper plants are tall Our tomato plants are super duper tall and I showed you how beautiful the basil looked at that point now things are a little bit different here you may not notice or remember but our basil was really tall to really tall kind of up here and what happened is we had a storm come through when we weren't home and we had these sides open and we had super heavy rain lots of wind and actually hail came in through this side damaged some of the leaves on our tomato plants it knocked over some of our basil most of our basil plants are fine but this basil plant back here it actually split into down the middle like this and this part that we have staked up now it's actually not doing very well at all it's kind of wilty and I won't be using that to make anything with because it's too Welty and then this half that's down here it's still doing okay I'm very confident that the basil will recover and I'm confident that we'll have many harvests after this one but I just wanted to show you what happened with the big storm I think everything will be okay and we're still going to have a great harvest today I do want to come in close and just show you kind of what happened to that that plant that was most affected you can see this is kind of wilty and this part is falling over here that's because this plant split in half right there okay this half isn't doing as well as this half but it's still connected but it's still connected down there at the ground so we'll see what happens the rest of the season with this plant another occurrence that is happening right now are the dreaded Japanese beetles are starting to appear and they have found the basil so it will be a great time for me to do a big Harvest so that we won't lose much of our basil to the Japanese beetles basil is very very forgiving when you cut it back normally when I cut it back I take about two-thirds of the entire plant off and it's it's kind of what I would consider a cut and come again kind of herb once you cut it back it will just grow back in a matter of weeks or a month or so and then you get to do this all over again so today I am going to be cutting this back quite a bit I'm going to be taking about two-thirds of the plant off at a time I do have a couple large baskets with me today I'm going to easily fill and maybe overflow these baskets today you can see that I am cutting these plants way back and they will definitely produce more branches and more leaves in the next few weeks okay that plant is done you can see how much I took off of there and this will just grow back nicely in a few weeks okay I have a very very nice Harvest of Basil let's take these into the house and get started making pesto well I'm in the house now in the kitchen with my two large baskets of Basil the next part coming up is the most time consuming and the most tedious but you can't make pesto without doing this part we need to take all the leaves off of the stems and I'm just going to be putting them in these pots temporarily so I do want to tell you that I do not wash my basil leaves before I use them one of the main reasons why you don't want to wash your basil leaves before you turn them into pesto is because the wetness will make your pesto watery and that does not taste good it actually makes a pretty inferior product so I'm just going to pick off all of these leaves and when I'm all finished I'll come back and we will make pesto all of those basil leaves have been picked off the stems we've got this nice big pot full and then this one also I'd like to say I did all this by myself but actually Samantha helped me and it went by really quickly so I'm thankful for that so today with the pesto I just want to go over the ingredients really quickly because this really is an easy recipe it really doesn't have a whole lot of ingredients and a lot of the ingredients you may already have at home or you can easily get from the grocery store or wherever you buy your groceries okay so we'll be using basil leaves today olive oil parmesan cheese nuts now I use walnuts these days I've used almonds in the past traditionally you use pine nuts but they are very very expensive so I'm going to be using walnuts we'll be using garlic cloves and salt and pepper that's really it I'm going to be doing a double batch today with you all I may continue going after I'm done filming to put extra in the freezer but I might also just freeze dry some of these leaves that I can have basil over the winter okay we're going to start off with our basil we're going to be using four cups of basil leaves and we're going to put them in this four cup measuring cup and we're going to kind of push it down in there a little bit we're not going to smash it in there but we don't want them loose now this recipe was actually given to Kevin a long time ago I was just trying to think back how long we've had and been using this recipe it's probably 13 years ago I got it from a co-worker and we've been using it ever since because it's so easy and it's so tasty okay put those in there gonna set that aside and we're going to get three cloves of garlic ready I use one of these silicone gizmos that helps take the paper part off of garlic cloves we're going to prepare three cloves of garlic and put that right in our food processor three cloves of garlic and even though there's not much in there we're going to go ahead and turn on the food processor and just get that chopped up a little bit then we're going to just open this up and add our basil leaves right to the food processor canister Bowl thingy we're going to add our nuts on top of there we're going to be using a heaping third cup of nuts now in this recipe you're going to hear me talk about Azure standard a lot that is a company that I can buy bulk food from kind of online it's a it's kind of a bulk buying group that delivers to your community once a month and you can get really great prices on bulk foods and bulk organic food I get my walnuts from them I buy them in like five pounds at a time they offer small pieces like Bakers pieces but they also offer halves and I normally buy the house because it's just what Kevin eats Kevin eats walnuts every day we're going to add half of a teaspoon of salt and black pepper we also buy both of those in bulk from Azure right now we're using the Redmond's Real Salt we really like that because it has all the minerals still in it it's not refined and we like the Redmonds in particular because it's from the United States and then half of a teaspoon of black pepper I buy this in bulk from Azure also okay so we're gonna get ready to start chopping that up but while it's chopping up we're going to be drizzling in some oil we're going to be using olive oil as you can see I buy it in gallon jugs okay so we are going to turn on the food processor take this out of here and as it goes round and round we're just going to start drizzling the oil in through this little Hopper and it's going to mix together and be wonderful [Applause] now that that is done our final ingredient pesto would not be the same without parmesan cheese I love parmesan it is so so tasty I do buy it already shred it up and I buy it from Azure they have some really great tasting the flavor of the parmesan from Azure is just amazing but you know you can get it at Walmart too or the regular grocery store all shred it up but if you also prefer to shred it yourself go ahead and just get a block of it and Shred the parmesan yourself so we're going to be adding one cup of shredded parmesan cheese add that into the food processor and then we're going to just blend that up also [Applause] that's it you guys that is how easy pesto is now I am going to get this prepared um some of this to go in the freezer and I'm going to do that pretty quickly because the green of the basil kind of starts dissipating quickly after you make it and if you wait too long uh to freeze it it starts kind of Turning Brown and it might even do that a little bit in the refrigerator if you refrigerate it and wait to use it for dinner so I'm going to go ahead and freeze at least one cup maybe more of this right away so that it can hold its really nice color I'm going to be freezing this in freezer bags just one quart freezer bags I am going to use this handy little bag holder sometimes I use these sometimes I don't and I'm just going to pour that into this freezer bag I'm gonna zip that closed and try to get as much of the air out of that so there's one serving of our pesto I'm going to put this in the freezer so it can get freezing and so that it stays this beautiful green color and then we'll move on well I'm all cleaned up from making the pesto now it is time to get ready to make our dinner I told you before we're making chicken pesto pasta but the keto version of that and instead of regular pasta noodles we will be using zucchini noodles we actually have some zucchini ready to be harvested in the greenhouse so let's go back out to the greenhouse get us some zucchini and I'll show you how to turn them into noodles oh well holy shmoly we have a few that are pretty big I don't know if you can see in the camera if it does justice but these are some pretty big zucchini I guess I should have picked these yesterday goodness there's one being able to come out to your Greenhouse or your garden and pick vegetables that you grew it is such a blessing several parts of our meal tonight are from vegetables and meat that we grew here on our own Homestead so the basil the noodles the zucchini and the chicken are all from our Homestead and one more there we go the others could use another day that's what I said yesterday and now I have giant zucchini but I'm gonna leave the rest to continue growing and take these five into the house we won't use all five but let's start eating them back inside with all five of our zucchini did I tell you we're probably not going to eat all five of these zucchini but we're gonna eat quite a bit because when we cook the zucchini down it just doesn't end up being a whole lot so it's been surprising to me how many zucchini we'd need for a full meal that our family can enjoy and be full at the end of it so there are a couple ways that you can turn zucchini into zucchini noodles or zoodles as some people call them they're different gadgets that you can use I have primarily been using a mandolin with a little attachment like a julienne attachment and you just take your zucchini and rub it back and forth and the zucchini noodles end up inside and that's what I've been using recently I picked up at Walmart a spiral cutter and I this is just no special expensive brand this is just whatever I could get at Walmart I've never used it before I did look at the instructions but I am going to try that today on like a thinner zucchini I think that that will work better on a thinner zucchini and my mandolin will work better on a fatter zucchini because inside the fat zucchini is kind of the spongy section with the new like the young seeds and that won't do very well I don't think on the spiral cutter [Applause] let me show you what those noodles look like that is half of one of those large zucchini and it did pretty well well that ended up being pretty neat and I think that when I have zucchini that are not really big and thick I'll probably use this method going forward but if I have some that are like odd shaped or really thick in the middle like that and I know that there are seeds and spongy things in there I'll probably use a mandolin so now I'm going to teach you how to cook these really quick there are lots of different ways that you can cook zucchini noodles you can cook them just like regular pasta noodles bring water to a boil and put the zucchini into the boiling water but for zucchini because they cook so quickly you'd only want them in the water for about three minutes before you drain them and then you'll want to put cold water over them so they stop cooking you can cook them in the oven at like 425 on a sheet pan like a cookie pan to cook them but I'm going to cook them on the stove top in a big old cast iron frying pan that's how we like it and I'm going to show you how to do that this is our big old cast iron frying pans almost as big as my stove top I am going to light that and put this on high heat and I'm going to use some avocado oil in here and I'm just going to drizzle quite a bit of oil on there once it is really hot I'm going to put those noodles in there and I'm going to almost like stir fry them because they're going to release quite a bit of liquid and I want that liquid to evaporate as quickly as possible so that our pasta doesn't seem kind of watery so I finished cooking the zucchini noodles while they were cooking I combined diced chicken and I heated that up and poured over the pesto just mix that up a little bit just the heat of the chicken will warm up that pesto enough when I put it all in a bowl I added some Parmesan cheese it is all ready to taste and I asked Kevin to come in and help taste this is the first time we've had zucchini noodles with pesto chicken we've had it with other stuff that's right so I'm hoping that you really like it you take the first taste all right it looks it looks great and I'll be honest everything we've had the zucchini noodles in they've been fantastic right you know we have tried um spaghetti squash and while we like it just fine we actually really like the zucchini noodles better I think they have much more neutral flavor right and I think they work really well with the pasta sauce are they really good you can't really taste the zucchini at all which really is what you're going for because pasta doesn't really have a lot of flavor either right so you taste the pesto and you taste the chicken and you taste the cheese yeah awesome I can't wait to have some you guys I am so happy that you joined me today in the greenhouse twice harvesting basil harvesting zucchini making some amazing homemade very easy pesto you know whip that up with some diced chicken or whatever add some you know your regular noodles or try the zucchini noodles they really are tasty so I'm glad you joined me today you guys if you're enjoying videos like this make sure that you hit the Subscribe button and the thumbs up we would love that and the best way that you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by your homestead take care and God bless God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 70,755

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing, pesto, basil, basil harvest, making pesto, how to make pesto, zucchini noodles, zoodles, keto pasta, keto pesto pasta, chicken pesto pasta

Id: PvMjY_XLfGw

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023