Preserving Basil

I Love Fresh Basil

Basil just so happens to be one of my favorite herbs, I plant it every year and enjoy it as much as I can every summer season. The one problem I run into though is in the winter....I don't typically use dried basil, I prefer fresh and the winter is just not basil's season.

This year I decided to do things differently, instead of purchasing fresh basil during the upcoming winter months I made up my mind to make my own preserved basil from my garden which is currently overflowing in yummy leafy basil which I definitely don't want to go to waste!

I've seen this idea many times online and decided to give it a go myself! 

Frozen Fresh Basil in Oil and Water

Step 1: Gather your herbs - you can do this for any herb that you enjoy cooking with.

Step 2: Wash your herbs, pick the leaves you are going to use and discard the rest. Then dry your herbs gently on either a paper or hand towel.

Washed and Picked From Their Stems.

Fresh From My Garden! Washed and Ready!

Step 3: I used a food processor because it's much easier and quicker but you can also hand mince your herbs with your favorite sharp knife (non serrated please!). Deposit your minced basil into a bowl.

Step 4: Using a muffin tin or ice cube tray, divide out your basil accordingly. I used the muffin tin for 1 tablespoon scoops of my basil, and an ice cube tray for 1 teaspoon portions of basil. Don't pack them in tightly, but rather gently and somewhat loosely pressed into the bottom. You want to give your liquid a chance to completely encase the basil.

Prepped and Ready

Herbs in the Bottom, Don't pack them too tight!

Step 5: Now for the fun part! Using your favorite oil, or water go ahead and just cover the top of the pressed basil. I used mostly Grape Seed Oil for my basil because I use oil in a lot of different cooking recipes, but I also used water for a whole ice tray for recipes such as soup where I might not want to add oil.

Just cover the top of the herbs

Step 6:  Toss it in the freezer for a few hours and then bag it!

Enjoy!

Pic from: fatandhappyblog.com

Author's Update:

Upon removing my supposedly frozen cubes from their trays, the oil was a complete mess! As soon as I took it out of the freezer it began to melt! The shapes did not hold up as planned.

For future reference, the water cubes worked great! And I think melted butter would be a better choice rather than oil, melted butter freezes super solid.

Bright Lights, Big City Part III

Day 4 Sunday:
Well we hated to admit it but we were beat....we ended up sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, and watching Netflix marathon style until early afternoon. We were hoping that in the early afternoon we'd miss any traffic I mean it is Sunday right? How bad could it be?

Boy were we wrong! According to my gps, it took us a whole hour to go 5 miles!!

This threw off our plans a bit as we didn't end up having as much time as we would have liked.

First stop, Ocean Beach!

Ocean Beach is not very warm, and its not a tourist location so parking was free and plentiful!

Such a beautiful day for going to the beach too! After some overcast clouds it ended up clearing up and reaching a nice 72 degrees F.

After hitting the beach we went to Golden Gate Park and checked out the SF Botanical Gardens. I hate to admit it but we spent the remainder of our time their so we didn't get to see much of the Golden Gate Park, but it was well worth it.

When we just couldn't take it any longer we headed out to check out Japan Town, being told that the food there is amazing by several different locals.

Their was a Japanese Celebration going on when we arrived, we stayed and watched for a while but our stomachs were driving us on to find food.

After much debate we settled on a yummy looking Japanese Sushi restaurant. My sister is not a big fan of sushi (Or so she thinks! I'd like to change her mind about it someday.) so she settled for a delicious curry noodle dish. What was fun about the restaurant was that they served green tea instead of water. And I was able to teach my sister how to use chopsticks! **Although if you ask her, it was starve or use them. I wouldn't let her ask for a fork.**

Sushi for dinner!

Yay Chopsticks!!

After dinner we headed through the Japanese Mall area to a place called Belly Good Crepes. They make delicious stuffed crepes both sweet and savory, if you get one with ice cream they will make a little animal out of it for you!

We had a strawberry, vanilla ice cream, nutella stuffed crepe!!

What a fun trip! But we were both exhausted....and it was time to head home come Monday.
We ended up leaving during a rush hour, and since neither one of us wanted to deal with the 6 lanes of hellish traffic, we ended up taking a longer route home that showed us some beautiful country but kept us from sitting in traffic. It added an hour to the trip which we decided was at least what we would have spent sitting in one place.

Bright Lights, Big City! Part II

Day 3 Saturday:
Back to the Pier! So much to see, so little time! Turns out parking is crazy expensive, luckily though we found an all day parking garage for $18.00 for the whole day. Most of the other garages were $45.00 I was also happy about our parking spot, we were right near the entrance with lots of foot/car traffic. It felt safe to leave our car their.

Mirror Maze on Pier 39

The Mirror Maze was a lot of fun if you ever get the chance to go through it i'd recommend checking it out!

Hand dipped and carved candles!

I love candles! This shop hand dips and carves designs into their candles, another cool thing about them is that the whole candle glows when you light it up, further emphasizing the design work!

We then made our way to Fisherman's Wharf.

The wharf was crowded and busy but we saw some fun stuff!

Boudin Sourdough Bakery

Rain forest Cafe!

After all the walking we were really tired but wanted to go check out China Town so we flagged down a gentleman who had a bicycle taxi and he gave us a ride to China Town with a small tour of famous buildings along the way. When we were dropped off I learned that it was about a 30 min walk back to the Wharf and the pedal taxis don't typically hang out in the area, bummer!

Took a bicycle trolley to China Town

TransAmerica Tower! This tower is built on rollers so that if their is ever an earthquake it will move and not fall!

Stopped for drinks at a Chinese Bar.

Their was a tree inside the entrance to the restaurant/bar where we stopped.

Mai Tai!

I really enjoyed all of the small shops in China Town, some were trinkety but others had fun more cultural things to see. I would have loved to go home with a tea or Saki set. We ended up walking for hours, and we wanted to make sure and get back before dark, we also wanted to have dinner at the Wharf. Before heading back to the Wharf for dinner we took a break and hit a bar for their happy hour appetizers and drinks!

After a short recovery we started the long hike back to the Wharf, luckily it was mostly downhill.

Beautiful Church

Fire Station

Overall we had a great day! And it ended with some yummy seafood at a local restaurant in the Wharf.