By Week 434. Summer 2024. I am 41 years old and standing in my kitchen — the Bench house kitchen, the one that held cancer and divorce and cinnamon rolls — and the stove is on and something is cooking and the house smells like grilled food and garden herbs and this is my life. This is the life I built.
Tom made his trout on Friday, the way he does every Friday, and the fish was perfect, and the kitchen smelled like lemon and capers, and I sat at the table and ate fish that my partner caught and cooked and served, and the being-served is still a wonder after all these years.
Mason is 13 and navigating middle school with the quiet competence that has always been his way — focused, kind, certain of who he is in a way that took me thirty years to achieve.
Lily is 11 and riding horses with the fearlessness of someone who has never considered the possibility of falling.
I made caprese salad this week. The food continues. The food always continues. It is the thread that connects every week to every other week, every year to every other year, every version of me to every other version — the woman on the kitchen floor, the woman at the chemo recliner, the woman at the grill, the woman at the outdoor table under the string lights. All of them, connected by the food they made with their hands. All of them, me.
The caprese salad I made this week was exactly that — simple, garden-fresh, connected to the season and the soil outside the back door. And what lives at the heart of a great caprese is good basil, which sent me straight to the food processor to make a batch of classic pesto: the same herbs, the same olive oil, just blended into something you can carry forward into a dozen other meals. It felt right. It felt like something the woman at the outdoor table under the string lights would make — something that threads this summer to the next one.
Classic Pesto
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
- 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/3 cup pine nuts (or walnuts)
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (optional, to brighten)
Instructions
- Toast the nuts. In a small dry skillet over medium-low heat, toast the pine nuts for 2–3 minutes, stirring frequently, until lightly golden and fragrant. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
- Pulse the base. Add the basil, toasted pine nuts, garlic, salt, and pepper to a food processor. Pulse 8–10 times until roughly chopped.
- Stream in the oil. With the food processor running, slowly pour in the olive oil in a steady stream. Process until the mixture is smooth and well combined, scraping down the sides as needed.
- Add the cheese. Add the grated Parmesan and pulse 3–4 more times to incorporate. Taste and adjust salt, pepper, or lemon juice as desired.
- Store or serve. Use immediately tossed with pasta, spread on crusty bread, or dolloped over a caprese salad. To store, press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the pesto and refrigerate for up to 5 days, or freeze in an ice cube tray for up to 3 months.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 175 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 17g | Carbs: 2g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 180mg