back in basil-land, baby!

Voila! Basil plants are back at Trader Joe’s! We did a major family grocery run on Sunday and found this beautiful plant at TJ’s Los Altos. The first thing Tate said upon seeing it was, “Can we have Dad’s garden pasta now?”

You may recall the last minute pasta my husband threw together in September following our neighborhood’s Harvest Walkabout. It was late, we were hungry and we only had some sausage in the refrigerator. Paul went out to the garden, grabbed a few tomatoes and some basil, then cooked up the sausage with some Maui onion. He tossed uncooked, cut tomatoes and a handful of fresh chopped basil. It was heavenly and is now one of our all-time favorites. It’s best with fresh, ripe tomatoes but you can also use chopped canned ones (or hothouse, which we found at Foothill Produce). The true key element is fresh basil – it pulls this dish together in the most magical way. In case you want to try it yourself, here’s the link to the directions:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/garden-inspired-pasta-pb

We found some terrific early avocados at Foothill Produce, too, which prompted Dane’s request for his favorite summer salad:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/tomato-avocado-onion-salad

Dinners like this get us excited about our trip to Italy this summer… Italian-grown Genovese basil here we come!