Searching for a Muse

Oh, Muse of food, thy name is Pesto.

About a week ago I mentioned harvesting the rest of my basil to make room for the garlic. I gave all of the basil to a French teacher at my school who asked for some in trade for some of her pesto. Now, I've never had basil straight before this year and the only pesto experience I had was a very, very bad one in Venice on our honeymoon years and years ago. I admit, I was trepidatious, yet almost excited based on my recent acknowledgement that basil is not, in fact, the devil's clay.

Well, the long three day weekend passed and I was a barrel of anxiety. Was I going to like it? What if I didn't? What would I tell her?

I received the pesto as promised, but the man's been out of town and I didn't want to embark on the adventure by myself. It sure did look tasty, however. It smelled heavenly, too.

So, tonight the man came home and I made a shrimp, pasta, and alfredo dish and scooped out a generous helping of the pesto to mix in with it.

It was wholly unacceptable and borderline criminal in its yummy goodness. I've never had anything like it before and ate and ate and ate until I wasn't hungry and then went for seconds and ate some more. I NEVER go for seconds!!! To show you just how wonderful the pesto in the dish was, there's none left. I made an entire box of pasta and it's all gone. Usually I can make one box last three or four dinners, but not this one. Gone. G. O. N. E.: Gone. It was fantastic and there is no parallel.

Traci, I find myself in an awkward position. I'm not making pesto. I don't trust myself. You are my sole supplier and I think we need to barter heavily next season to keep us both in supply or I honestly think I'll cry. What in the world am I supposed to do all winter without your pesto from fresh basil? Can I buy 'fresh' basil in the store and give it to you? I'm at a loss, but I can't survive the winter without more, I tell you. More!!!

Have you gotten the gist that I kind of liked it? It was stupid awesome and you're my hero. I have a shrine set up to you in my school cabinet, but don't ask to see it because it will make the other teachers feel bad.

On a Keychains for a Cause note, these three breast cancer awareness and three black cross on pink keychains are headed out this week to Lovie. Thank you for your order, Lovie and the skull key fob you requested is yours free for the order of four or more keychains. Thank you for helping support my school's Relay For Life.
Oh, BTW, speaking of my school...our county just won an amazing 1 million dollar prize for being the best urban county in the entire United States! Check out the link. I'm pretty darn proud. The picture on the front page at first was a picture of the hallway in my school, but the pictures are on a rotating basis, so it's not up there just now and I don't know if it will be back. The prize is granted to award scholarships to students who struggled at first, but have raised their grades enough to attend college. This is a FANTASTIC sub group of kids that work harder than you may imagine and they get over looked for scholarships because they struggled in 9th or 10th grades. They are truly students who deserve recognition and I can't wait to see the first scholarships awarded.

The morning comes early. Sweet basil, scholarship awarding dreams.