Passing Pesto

Pesto-day was yesterday, our annual orgy of plucking basil, grating parmesan and romano, peeling garlic, pouring olive oil, crushing walnuts, and packaging finished product in small containers for freezing, all while drinking wine and listening to music. Saturday was a chill and rainy break in a run of lovely northern summer days. We headed for Pike Place market early, eschewed the usual dawdle, and got back before the Blue Angels’ bridge closure.

The basil this year was not from Sosio’s, where I have been a regular fruit and vegetable shopper since living in the market for a couple of years before Ann and I married. Sosio’s is the best in the market – knowledgable, friendly, great merchandising of top quality produce, irreverent. One day, Ann sent me off with a list, more like a directive. George read over my shoulder, spotted Ann’s admonition “good peaches”, and announced to the crowd in his gravelly barker’s voice “Oh My God, Fletch is not shopping for bad peaches today.”

Why the disloyalty? When we arrived, we cruised the temporary, tented stalls set up on cobbled Market Way, mainly local growers of organics, heirlooms, gigantic cabbages and romaines, hybrid oddities, and so on. Just to see what they had. One young Vietnamese couple offered huge bundles of basil at less than half the cost of those in the permanent stalls, so we guiltily hid those when we went to Sosio for garlic, onions, heirlooms and such.

Off to DeLaurenti’s for parm and romano (and some fresh mozzarella for a caprese dinner.) Their romano fuldi was chosen for its pungency; the parm is an Argentine – but Italians made up the largest bloc of Argentine settlers, so that’s OK.

The roar of Angels over the island didn’t spoil the mood as the kitchen filled with rich scents of basil, cheeses, wine, garlic and oil. This morning, my hands still faintly echo all that.

Lunch was bread dipped in fresh pesto… and wine… and music… and grins. Another milestone of summer….