Put pesto on this, that and everything else this summer

The downtown farmers market called my name this past Saturday morning. I know the Kansas Grown Farmers Market at the Sedgwick County Extension Center out west is much bigger, but I have so many memories of the downtown one from when I was a little girl going with Grandma Marge and Aunt Dorothy – back when it was located by what’s now The Kitchen and was then the Rock Island Cafe.

Remember that fantastic restaurant? Me, too, because two family friends owned it: Chris Farha and Janet Cohlmia. We’d wake up early, go shop the market and eat cheesy eggs at the Rock Island. Some days, I’d get to stay and bus tables for a cookie from Chris, and I thought I was big stuff. Oh, how I wish I could go back to the days when busing tables was a treat. Childhood excitement is like none other.

Our garden is bearing fruit already, mostly herbs, but we’ve picked about a dozen or so cherry tomatoes and even a regular-sized tomato. Our basil is growing really well since we moved the location of it this year and it gets more hot afternoon sun. The first thing Randy thinks of is Caprese salad, which I’ve assembled for him several times already. I live for pesto. I could literally eat it on everything and never tire of its fresh, nutty, basil flavors. I think pesto goes with about any food.

If you happen to Google pesto recipes, you’ll see that you can make it with any greens or any combination of greens, any nut and nuttier-flavored hard cheeses, like Parmesan or Pecorino. I make my pesto dairy-free using “Parmesan-style topping” by the brand Go Veggie. You can purchase it at Green Acres, Whole Foods and Natural Grocers. A friend of mine makes her delicious pesto with part basil, part spinach, and it’s lovely. It softens the basil flavor, because raw spinach has a pretty neutral flavor to it.

Back to the farmers market – I purposefully took only $20 cash with me. I cannot be stopped when there’s gorgeous produce to be had. I purchased some triple berry chia seed jam from Urban Prairie. If you haven’t tried Karin’s jams, salsa or pie filling, you’re missing out. She is at the market once a month and does the Second Saturday Artisan Market at the Workroom. In full disclosure, Karin is Randy’s paralegal, but even if I didn’t know her on a personal level, I’d purchase her delicious jams. I’m a big fan of the chia jams for many reasons. Chia is healthy for you, and those jams have just a little bit of honey as sweetener. I prefer my jam less sweet, and the triple berry is a new flavor, so I needed a jar of that.

I bought a few items from Sweet Bites because they had gluten-free vegan treats. The tomatoes, garlic and local honey were the last things I used my cash on. The garlic is so beautiful I hardly want to use it. The tomatoes are a darker, almost purple color – I think they’re Cherokee Purples, and they taste sweet and have the right texture. Pretty impressive, because it’s early for an abundance of tomatoes. I tried and couldn’t pass up the local Bee Harmony Honey. They even offered me a sample, and, well, you know I like samples. Their branding is so well done, I know long after the honey is gone that I’ll be using the jar for other things – maybe even pesto.

Some fun uses for pesto: toss it with some pasta or zucchini noodles, top crostini with it and a dollop of goat cheese, add a bit of olive oil and drizzle it on top of Caprese salad, use it as a sauce for your homemade pizza (which is fun to make on the grill this time of year), use it as a dip for grilled meats or veggies, or just do like I do, grab a spoon and go to town.

This story was originally published June 26, 2017 at 10:25 PM with the headline "Put pesto on this, that and everything else this summer."