Pesto Festo 2012

This has been going on for a lot of years. Like any tradition, it's hard to remember how it got started.

There are a few highlight years. One year back in the 1990s we had it at my house on 15th Avenue & Gail & Ian brought long-stemmed garlic harvested from the Denman Island Farm they had been on. Mave & Keira were there then.

Then there were the two mechanical breakdown years. The food processor burnt out and Ian went out to get a replacement. The next year THAT processor burnt out and Gail went out to buy a Very Sturdy Replacement.

Gail said there were people begging to join this elite gathering. She said she had been telling them to start their own Pesto Festo. Then we thought maybe we could sell tickets to people wanting to come to cover our costs.... Other ideas flowed from that of course. Erica suggested the single seating restaurants approach with a set menu.... and so on.

Each year there are talks of management and labor. I was having a fit about quality control on the preparation of the watercress. George & Ian hated de-stemming the watercress. I found a quicker way, & they didn't obey the new protocol. I became a Pill & a Nag about it until I realized I was having No Success.

Michelle & Gail are the Major Tasters & Blenders. This year we had two food processors so things went really quickly, but we also had a shocking amount of de-stemmed surf left over. I don't know if we ran out of jars or lids or energy.  But for sure we got too many flats of leaves. Oi!!

Well, this was before the left-over stage. There was a big bag of basil, a similar one of cilantro,  one of of watercress, and a small one of dill.

But the scale of our processing has evolved to THIS look!!
















As usual, I got caught up in majik.... the chair, the jars, the tablecloth....

This unusual double irate weave tablecloth was used for our end-of-work meal. We had a conversation about spilling on the cloth. And of course there were a few.

Cast of characters:

Teyah, Gail & Ian's daughter, Maeve, a teacher friend, George

Gail hostess extraordinaire, Ian host ditto, Michelle, their friend.

Mave, who dropped in & stayed. We taught at Charles Dickens School together for a year.  

Lesley, Jay, Max & Reed dropped in & provided diversion. This is Jay & Reed.

Leslie with Max eating beans grown in Leslie's garden. We ate them for supper. And Erica with Reed.

 

Leslie, 4 days into the South Beach Diet. She said she was feeling a bit tired from it & with it! She knew some teacher-folks from the BCTF in common with Mave. Mave's daughter, Keira, came for dinner. She's doing a master's at UBC in counseling psych, so she & Leslie had sharings about that. 

And I... my jobs were de-stemming & washing & spinning & bagging some of the batches of leaves. I also made 4 loaves of bread for the gathering.

Our dinner: ravioli with basil pesto, linguini with tomato pesto, salmon, eggplant baked with ginger, string beans, salad, & done before the rain, which was good because we ate outside on the back porch.

Our sustenance during the work: bread with duhkah, sausage, cucumbers, marinated mushrooms, and various trial blends from the kitchen. And did I mention wine? Some People started wine Right Off The Bat, while others were More Restrained, or Very Restrained [Leslie]. But wine and beer were a lovely part of the day.

Merriment was had by all.

That's it for the day.