It's been a basil night.

At the beginning of June, our friends Mary and Hans bought a basil plant for us. It was a while before we finally got it from them, and when we did, it was huge. Huge, I tell you! I was afraid of killing it, as I usually do any living plant, but we stuck it in the window of the kitchen and kept watering it when needed.

Tonight, I decided to make use of the basil plant. It had nearly doubled in size so I cut off a sizable portion to make Basil Lemonade (duh). It's been too long. Interestingly enough, tonight is also the night Corbin and I decided to make our chicken quinoa stir fry, which is delicious and the recipe for which can be found on the back of the Trader Joe's quinoa box. The last thing you do for the dish is stir in fresh basil, so I hacked a little more off the plant and julienned it to add to our dish. Delicious, but it seems that I had some extra.

I've had a Sam's Club-size box of strawberries sitting in my fridge for about a week now, which I've been neglecting for grapes and junk food. I pulled them out and they looked a little squirrely, but I couldn't bear to throw them away, so I started cutting them up and thinking about what I could do with them. What would mask the mushy parts? What would mask the parts that were frozen from sitting in the back of the fridge? I decided to macerate them. For those of you who don't know, that means drawing the juices out of the fruit with sugar. I tossed them in a bowl with a  tablespoon of sugar, a few squeezes of lemon juice, and.... gasp! The leftover basil. This could either be the best idea ever or the worst idea ever.

It was the best. It's delicious. All you need to do is put a strawberry and a basil leaf in your hand to smell that it is a fantastic combination. Believe me, I know the combination may sound strange, but try it! Basil is my herb, fo' real.

In fact, add basil to the list.



p.s. Should you choose to macerate some berries tonight, let the berries sit in the sugar-lemon juice mixture for about thirty minutes at room temperature to give the sugar time to draw out the juice. Wonderful.