Last winter, our frozen pesto became a favorite. It surpassed beans and even frozen tomatoes as the go-to ziplock of choice. Like tomatoes, pesto makes for wonderful pasta and pizza or even as a spread for those co-op bread, oil, cheese dinner nights.

I knew the making and freezing of more pesto would be essential this year. So I planted more basil – and more varieties just in case one sucked. As it turned out, both Italian Large Leaf and Purple Ruffle varieties are delicious. I seem to detect hints of mint in the Purple Ruffle, but my palette isn’t necessarily very educated.

Our pesto recipe is fairly standard. I just add olive oil, basil (although we’ve also had wonderful spinach pesto in the past), garlic, salt and lemon juice. I do it all to taste adding a bit at a time so as not to overwhelm with oil or lemon. We rarely have pinenuts, but if I happen to have them, they would be included. The cheese is purposely excluded since these batches are bound for the freezer. Cheese (usually shredded Parmesan) can always be added later. One more note, if you have different colors of basil, the final color of the pesto will be muddied if you mix them. So, if you are one to color coordinate your meals to your napkins and place settings, keep this in mind.