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With the drought, and my fully negligent style of caring for plants, all but the heartiest herbs I planted this spring in a garden bed at the front of my house have died. There’s some rosemary out there and some very pitiful oregano, but that’s it. However, on my back patio is a massive basil … bush. It was a volunteer in a potted plant; a potted plant that I’ve lovingly cared for, despite my leanings toward vegetation mismanagement. Thus, the basil plant has been the accidental beneficiary of my attentions to the prized plant, a fledgling grapefruit tree.

This grapefruit tree, and her two smaller sisters, are important to me because of what they represent. They are a link to our last house, a sweet little bungalow in south Austin where my husband and I got married in the backyard and where we brought our baby home. The house, built in the ’40s, had big trees, a big yard, a basement (I know!) and a grapefruit tree that produced the most wonderful tart/sweet grapefruit I’ve ever had.

One winter, we had friends over for a holiday party and let the children pick all the grapefruit off the tree. We got more than 80 grapefruit from that harvest, and shared them with our neighbors as a Christmas offering. In the spring, the sweet-smelling blossoms on the tree brought every manner of butterfly to our yard. The tree was almost as hard to leave as the house.

But, sentimental as I am about it, I know that a house is just a thing, and it’s the people inside that matter. I haven’t mentioned the bad things about the house, like the crumbling exterior, loud neighbors with even louder dogs, recurrent vandalism to our cars and that fun time sewage spewed out of a valve in the front yard. We moved to our current house for all the right reasons, and I’m happy to be here. And, I brought one shriveled grapefruit with me.

My daughter and I planted the seeds from it, and they miraculously grew. I’ve watered the baby trees faithfully through two summers, and covered them through two winters. There are three, and my hope is to plant one in this yard, one in my mom’s yard in San Antonio, and one in my dad’s yard near Marble Falls. Surely, one will make it to full fruition, and we’ll have Christmas grapefruit again.

Now back to the opportunistic basil. See, it’s nearly as tall as the grapefruit tree now, and I feel like it’s sucking some of the life out of my dear little tree. That one hasn’t grown as much as the other two this summer, and I can’t help but feel it’s the basil’s fault. So the intruder came out today, roots, woody stalk and all. And today, I made pesto. And darned if it doesn’t have just a hint of a citrusy taste.

Pesto

1/2 cup blanched almonds

3 cloves garlic

4-5 cups fresh basil leaves, packed

1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil

1 cup grated parmesan

Place almonds and garlic in a food processor. Pulse a few times. Add basil and salt. With processor running, pour olive oil in a steady stream into mixture. Process until mixture is thoroughly ground. Add parmesan and process for about a minute.

If you’re not going to freeze it, then use it within a week. It freezes well. I like to have it on hand to make an easy dip for entertaining. I serve it with pita chips, bagel chips or another crunchy (not crumbly) cracker and kalamata olives.

Pesto-Feta Cheese Dip

1 package (8 ounces) feta cheese

3/4 cup pesto

Olive oil

Crumble feta cheese into food processor. Add pesto and process. This is a thick dip, but drizzle in a little olive oil while processing if the consistency is too thick for your taste.

Posted by shannono on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 9:26 am | 4 Comments » You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.