Mama mia, redux!

When we are entertaining, a favorite dinner (dare I say a favorite...experience?) is of Italian origin, unlike us. We start with homemade focaccia bread on which we slather roasted garlic, pesto and brie cheese. This really could be the main course as we all stand around the island with red wine, eating and talking. This is followed by stuffed shells and salad and more wine. For dessert, we've done a few different things, but lately standard operating procedure has been for me to make a cheesecake served with espresso.

One of our evenings we were going to do the whole shebang but it fell through. We had some of the fixings, so we had to march onward to prevent waste.

We like to grow our own basil for the pesto, but this years "crop" hasn't been doing so well. We actually only have one plant this time. If you find yourselves in a similar predicament, Gentle Readers, I've found that Central Market has bunches of basil for $.99. We load up on this when we need to.

Here are some in-progress shots.


If you need to freeze the pesto you make, put it in a glass bowl with some kind of lid and pour a layer of olive oil over the top of the pesto. It makes a good seal.