Recycling dirty diapers!

This is the BEST! A recycling plant for dirty diapers. It will be powered by converting the organic parts (you know, poo) in the diapers to energy and the inorganic bits (the remaining 98%) will be post-consumer pulp and plastic. That is so fabulous. Have you ever thought of the bazillion dirty diapers in the landfill? Its the kind of thing that drives me bonkers to consider. That is a big part of why we use primarily cloth (not the only reason). But a lot of day cares and the like won't use cloth and 'sposies are not always avoidable. If we can work on improving the sustainability of how they are made and then recycling them, thats just awesome.

In other news: For the first time ever I planted garlic in the fall! I finally did it! For no good reason I have never managed to get it done in the past. So yesterday, a gorgeous day, z. and I pulled up the tomatoes, dug up the dirt, mixed in some compost, and stuck the little bulbs in the dirt. Yay! (note to self: they are just east of the broccoli)

Fall in the Garden

Its pretty much fall, and has been cold and rainy for days. Check out this gorgeous leaf I just spotted in my yard!

It is time to clean up the garden. Get it all flipped and emptied Except for the broccoli and lettuces of course. And also my several puny foot and a half high pea plants that just didn't get a move on crawling up the place where the beans that came before them crawled. Why so slow peas? They have a couple blossoms. Will they keep growing as the chill sets in? Whatever peas. We'll see what happens. I am also leaving the gorgeous and delicious peppers on the vine for awhile (ditto baby eggplants). Is that ok, should I harvest them all now and freeze them? They have been so good this year! I just went out and picked off pretty much all the tomatoes. They are not going to ripen out there. Maybe it will warm up, but I decided to just bring them in. I am going to try some oven baked green tomatoes, and maybe a tomato spice cake. Meanwhile, check out this crazy volunteer tomato plant climbing up the fence! I have a small forest of tomato plants (and weeds) around the composter that I have let flourish and pulled a few fruits from. It makes me curious though - why all this babying of tomato seeds indoors and then gently transplanting and then staking so careful like? Next spring can I just bury a few tomatoes next to my fence? I want to try. Problem is, I suppose, they get a late start that way. But still, I am really fond of the idea of a no-work garden. These volunteer tomatoes like it too.

Composting: Tricks

Well, not tricks exactly. No magic, no real secrets. But there are several things that I have figured out over a couple years of composting that have helped out.

Composting has a reputation that spans from "easy as pie - throw junk in your back yard and next week, voila, black gold" to "a big fat lie. it will smell and take two years to transform into anything useful." The truth is, like most things, somewhere in between.

The Pile v. The Spinning Contraption

We originally had two composter container deals side by side sitting on the ground along our back fence. This is the ideal scenario. Two is very helpful, so that you have one to fill while the other cooks. A pile on the ground surrounded by a purchased frame or chicken wire or whateves works great. When the pile started to cook it was a marvel to watch - you can feel the heat off the top, and if the mix is right the break down happens pretty quick and beautifully. Problem for an urban gardener - even one with a rather nice sized yard like ours - is rodents. Rats. Damn icky ugly things. Our first year of composting, something kept eating my tomatoes. No deer round these parts (do deer eat tomatoes? I haven't ever had a deer problem). We realized our compost was a delicious easy dinner for rodents and from there they found the tomatoes. Cringe Cringe. I never saw them - they were not near the house. At least that. So we got rid of the piles. Now, if you keep food scraps fully covered, that is supposed to deter animals of all sorts. But its not a perfect solution. So, for my birthday, I got an above ground spinning composter. I expected this to make perfect compost faster and easier and to solve the worlds problems. Not so fast. The first year it never ever seemed to make anything resembling what I was used to from the piles. Always mushy slimy stuff. That is when I learned about the uber importance of the brown green ratio (see below). Even with that improvement, I have still never pulled garden ready compost out of my spinner. Instead I dug a big old hole next to it and dump the almost compost (too slimy clumpy stuff) into the hole and cover/mix it with the hole dirt. I mix it occasionally with my compost turner and then, later, voila - garden compost. I have a pile/hole of good nutritious dirt that I can pull from whenever need be. yay!

Brown v. Green (or, aha! cardboard!)

To get things going you need the right balance of browns (dead dry carbon stuff) to green (live green nitrogen stuff). This is especially important in a contained spiny composter. The right balance seems to be as many browns as you can possibly add. I fill cosmo (the composter) to the top with browns before we start dumping our kitchen scrap bucket in.

I didn't know quite how to do this at first - what to use for browns? You can use dried grass from your lawn (we don't really have that). Dried leaves were our largest supply but leaves take forever to break down. If you use them, mow over them first. But I suggest leaving leaves (hee) separate. They make a great leaf mold, but it takes a long time. You can put them in a garbage bag with holes poked in and flop the bags over a couple times a year. Or, like us, just create a leaf area. We had a low spot in the yard from previous owner's pool. We always pile up the leaves there and they break down and sometimes I mine that area for layers of leaf mold as garden mulch. We always throw bunch of leaves on the garden area in the fall too. Lots of good garden food in them.

So, no dried grass, no dried leaves, what the browns are we going to do? Ah Ha, cardboard and paper! Not sure why it took so long to figure this one out. We seem to collect a decent number of cardboard boxes from things arriving in the mail etc. We stock them up. Rip them up. Great browns. And newspaper - perfect. As far as my internet research tells me, don't worry about the ink. Many gardeners I know use newspaper in their garden. Its fine. I still don't like to use colored pages though. Might be fine too. Twisted up cardboard and paper (brown paper bags!) adds space in the pile too - extra air. That's good.

Never ever throw away toilet paper tubes! Don't recycle them either! Throw them in that kitchen scrap bucket! Paper bags too!

Fruit Fly Blues

There are lots of compost crocks that I have not tried. I have tried a couple. They might work great for you. But fruit flies annoy the heck out of me and the best solution seems to be to keep the "crock" in the fridge. We use a good sized thin plastic bucketish thing that salad from the grocery store came in. Have used the same one for months and months.

Only one composter? Cosmo needs a fridge

After weeks and weeks of filling cosmo with our kitchen scrap bucket (after of course filling him up with browns) he starts to get pretty heavy to turn. Because it keeps breaking down you could fill it up way too much as it would get infinitely heavier. Instead I stop filling and keep turning and let it cook until I deem it ready to go into the dirt hole/pile for faster finishing. Meanwhile we toss our scraps into cosmo's refrigerator: these crazy durable buckets that cat litter comes in. They are recyclable but we keep them and have used them for all kinds of things. Handy buckets with good seal lids. By the time a couple of those are full its time to start a new cosmo load - browns then the "refrigerator" contents and then on and on all over again. The cycle of dirt.

UU guest blogging

I wrote a post for the education blog of our church (first unitarian universalist). It is something I would have written on this blog, so here it is again. Our early fall garden in sprouting lettuces, spinach, broccoli, peas, and still beans beans galore. I didn't know these beans would do so well so long! nice surprise. Anyhow, my "guest blogger" post:

Yesterday I knocked down a giant interconnected web craftily spun by a spider between our compost bin and the beans. Not very kind to the spider, but necessary if we were to walk around the beans to the tomatoes and pick our produce. The spider will only build another, I imagine. The web reminded me of the other giant interconnected web; The Unitarian Universalist one, of course, and of my hope that this messy little garden could teach Zoe everything that it means to me.

Perhaps it is too much to ask a modest backyard garden to teach a child about thankfulness, interconnectedness, and morality. But, here is a story about why I think it is worth a try.
Our backyard is a wild, overgrown, semi-cultivated children’s museum of educational opportunity for a toddler. Before she was born I daydreamed about gardening together. She would play on a blanket or be strapped to my back while I planted, weeded, and harvested. We would talk about where food comes from. Watch it grow out of the ground. Thank the worms that helped the dirt. Taste food right off the vine. Some of this came true in practice.
I want my daughter to understand that food is not something that magically appears in a grocery store. I want her to be aware that everything we do depends on people we do not know, plants, animals, rain, bugs, and our actions too. I do not want her to take things for granted. I would like her to think of the whole lifecycle of everything we use and the impact of our actions. There wouldn’t be so much darn litter in our neighborhood if the kids (and adults) had some respect for the things they used and some awareness of what happens after they toss it on the ground. I would like Zoe to learn respect, awareness, and thankfulness. A good place to start is to plant a garden.

I am not much of a gardener. I only started a garden maybe five years ago. It is messy and weedy and not everything grows the way it should. But every year we eat something that comes from our backyard and each year I have some additional success (and additional failures). I am learning. I want my daughter to learn from the get go.

What is she learning? Right now our biggest lesson is distinguishing between red and green tomatoes and only picking the red ones. But I don’t stop her from exploring and picking, even if it is a green tomato or a not-yet-finished eggplant. She will learn. And as she does we will talk about where the food that we buy at the store grows – who takes care of those plants? What water do they use to give the plants a drink? Is it from a rain barrel like we have at our house? Where does the water come from when it comes out of a hose? How did the food get to this store? How did this cereal get in this box? Did it come from a plant? If we can’t plant cereal in our garden, where does it come from?

Imagine that everyone thought about all the steps in the long long chain that brings a person Cheerios in the morning, and everything else that we eat, and everything else that we do.

Gardening together is a good place to start.

Summer harvest

I have rescued tomato plants that were not properly supported from the start, and i think they are going to recover nicely, and the beans are in full bloom and looking great! gathered a big bag full today and looking forward to tasting them! Our summer squash bounty has proven very easy to keep up with, even though usually the story about zucchini is how hard it is to use it all up. But I have only given away a couple to neighbors and the rest has all been stuffed or made into bread, stew, pizza, veggie burgers and even chocolate cake! delish! The cake was a first time attempt for a little dinner party last night and I dare say it was a success! I found the recipe on this food blog. Also made tomato and corn pie, which I look forward to each season. Just a biscuit-style crust filled with layers of tomatoes, corn, chopped basil and chives, and sharp cheddar cheese, then a drizzling of yogurt (plain) mixed with lemon over all that and topped with more crust. Try it!

bowl of garden yum

Came home from nebraska to a bounty of zucchini yellow squashes and tomatoes! Eggplants and beans are about to arrive in abundance. Yay garden! There was also a forest of bolting arugula and lettuces along with some mighty big weeds that all needed pulling. Next year i definetly need more appropriate tomator supports. I have a handfull of big green tomatoes from a plant that has fallen over!

digging in the dirt

I am really excited about this year's garden! For the first time I finally got garlic in the ground - sure, it should have been out there in the fall, and yes, I did initially plant it upside down. Realized my mistake as I was about to fall asleep. doh! Why did I do that? But yesterday I righted most or many of them I think. Anyhow, I am off to a start even if a less than perfect one. But this year there is a chance that I will have a garden guru helping me out. oh yes. my own garden guru. More on that later. and on the potato barrells I intend to build. I am awaiting the rest of the seeds I ordered, I sure hope they come soon because those peas need to get dirty!
Yeah spring!!!!

Eat the View! A White House Garden Petition

This is so fantastic. Sign this petition to encourage President Obama (yay!) to turn part of the White House lawn into an organic vegetable garden for the White House kitchen and DC food pantries. It would not be the first time there was a garden on the premises. Speaking of olden days conservationism, check out this WWII era movie made by the UK Ministry of Education for the Ministry of Food about how to cook cabbage (spoiler: with little water and with the lid on, otherwise it will be "soggy and nasty"). Modern update: boys can cook cabbage too. And another thing about cabbage: its a very efficient water consumer, especially compared to lettuce which is the most water-intensive crop grown, and holds many more nutrients and antioxidants to boot. Just one of the things im learning from The Ethical Gourmet.

what's growing

this is our messy main garden bed

baby watermelon
yellow squash

banana peppers

baby bell peppers - i recently learned, if you let them ripen to red (my favorite) the plant will not live as long or produce as much. So its best to have one plant for green and another to let ripen to yummy red.

jalapeno

tomatoes!

cherry tomatoes!

grapes

baby beans .

lettuce

first harvest!

Zoe and I just harvested our first summer squash and hot peppers of the season! We are going to have lots of zucchini, which is sort of a tradition I guess. Its just so easy to grow! And I was tempted to try a new variety this year - eight ball. Its the nice round squash on the right. That particular one may have been plucked a bit early, but there will be more! I am excited to make stuffed zucchini bowls out of them. I have some ricotta that needs using so I am looking forward to a zucchini lasagna this week. Although eggplant is also good in the sauce our eggplant plants seem to have forgotten to grow. Not sure what their problem is. Maybe I am being too impatient, which isnt out of the ordinary for me. Speaking of impatient, I am still awaiting our first good batch of compost. grumble. Must have not had a good balance of browns and greens. Apparently the balance is more important in an enclosed tumbler. Added a bucketfull of browns last week and will try to be patient, spinning it and waiting a week or two. I actually had a dream that it was finished and overflowing with perfect compost soil ready to use - so I guess I am officially a garden dork.

home grown mulch: an ode to trees.

Trees.
oh how tall you stand
with roots searching the deep
gathering up tasty nutrients
and depositing them in your
leaves.
oh leaves.

ha! im not much of a poet, but im feeling the love for leaves. its tragic that zillions of leaves get raked up, sacked up (in plastic so frequently) and tossed in the dump. tragic! these little sheets of nutrients are gold for plants and i finally utilized them just today. we have a big wonderful tree that leaves us gobs of leaves each fall. gobs. we have always raked them into a pile in a low spot of our yard, slowly filling the low spot, tossing shovels full in the compost and letting the rest get covered by grass (and mostly weeds). the result is a big area of layers and layers of "leaf mold" - partly decomposed leaves full of nutrients and the perfect mulch. so this afternoon with zoejo chilling on my back in our new ergo i mined the low spot for bucket after bucket full of leaf mold, read:mulch, and covered the herb/kitchen corner garden. it looks pretty. weeds will be kept down. good good nutrients will be delivered. moisture will be kept. this weekend ill do the larger vegetable patch.

gardening instead of buying

apparently there is a huge explosion of gardening because groceries are so darn expensive, especially organic ones. this is great! as I have written before, the more vegetables grown in our backyards the better. I hope the trend continues. the prices encouraged me to try harder at gardening this year, however, i still have let things get a little wild back there. and something is eating the leaves of my beans and peas. arrgh. i know i should read about what organic something i can spray on them to scare away the bad bugs, but im too busy watching 30 Rock season 1 on netflicks online. im going through a phase of laze. but I did plant cilantro and fennel to attract good bugs to eat the bad bugs. thats a start. maybe next year we will extend the garden plot - thats a lot of work. but it fills up so quick. I definetly want to berm around the fence. need room for pumpkins. one thing at a time...

Garden update, its a late start

It has been raining and raining here, days of greyness and wetness have kept us from getting the garden ready for seeds and transplants. But the sun finally showed herself today and I realized that all the dampness was really a blessing - it was so easy to pull up the ridiculous number of weeds that covered our garden plot and flip the soil. So now it will sit a couple days and then we can plant the little tomato seedlings that sit anxiously waiting their new home, along with numerous seeds that should be in the ground by now: zucchini, squash, melons...and we will have to buy transplants for the seedling attempts that failed, mainly eggplant and peppers. Also need to plant basil and a few more herbs. Oregano, Rosemary, Chives, two kinds of parsley and...something else Ive forgotten have come back on their own - yay perennials! I have already transplanted the broccoli, which are doing fine so far. There are pea shoots heading toward the trellis, and I put beans in the ground today. I also have a new pink rose bush to plant by the fence - my first mother's day gift addition to our garden.
Im sad we havent been able to add our own compost to the soil this year. Got too late a start with our new composter, and it has been slow to begin cooking. Think we should add some compost activator for the first time - not sure what it is but I will have to look into it.

oh to save the world one tomato at a time

please read "why bother" in the NYT magazine's "green issue" and be inspired to plant something. dont have a yard? cant find a community garden? well, lots of vegetables grow excellently in pots and containers- tomatoes, lettuce, beans, garlic, peppers, carrots... (go here and here to learn)

here is my favorite bit from the article:
"But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. "

Spring Spring Harrah!

It has been so so warm the last couple days. I went from putting zoe in pajamas, a sleep sack and blanket one night to trying to figure out the right combination of fan, onsie, blanket-or-not?, to have zoe sleep well. Its so warm on our top floor! And the car, oh my. I'm afraid to take her anywhere by car because it doesn't have air and whoa my it gets warm even with the windows down. And its only April, its going to get so so so much hotter!
Anyhow, this is not what I signed on to quickly post about. This is:

Today we finally got outside to dig in the dirt!
Zoe sat in her bouncy seat in the shade while I cleaned up the corner herb etc garden, pulling weeds and finding herbs that survived and flowers that are popping up. I created a little lettuce plot, surrounded by old bricks that are conveniently abundant under our porch. I planted carrots around the lettuce bed. Put a trellis type thing (also found under the porch) and planted peas. Grow peas grow! I set the broccoli and tomato seedlings outside to get better sun. Still bummed the eggplant and peppers never sprouted. Will have to buy transplants.

Oh, and I also managed to hang diaper laundry out to dry in the sun for the first time, and wow! the sun really does do a great job bleaching out stains! As I was hanging it up I was really surprised at how all of a sudden it seemed that there were lots of stains that I hadn't seen before - and poof! A few hours in the sun and they are like new! woohoo!

Setting Zoe in her bouncy seat in the shade lets me get all sorts of outdoor work done! (shouldn't celebrate too much, I'm sure she wont always be in the mood. but a big chunk of the gardening actually happened during nap time - yay monitor technology)

Ill post garden pictures before long.

happy at home

So many things to talk about. Here is a relatively randomly generated list:

Glad to be home. And really glad ms. zo has gone back to happily sleeping in her crib for good long bouts of time at night. It was all about co-sleeping on the road, which was nice in the cuddle department and not so nice in the get-good-sleep department.

So proud of my baby girl who rocked as super traveler for three days of driving to Nebraska and a long flight home with too many hours in Chicago (but thanks for the rocking chairs in the airport, thats nice!)

So proud of my little brother who rocked as Tommy in his highschool's production of Brigadoon.

In Nebraska I had the chance to record a couple tracks for a lullaby cd my mom's group Baby Needs Shoes is working on. Lots of fun. The first time anyone sang while nursing a baby in that particular studio...probably not common in any studio. And Zoe may make an appearance as well. We tried to record cute cooing sounds, but she was mostly interested in yelling in a way that wont really jive with a lullaby album.

While hanging out at my mothers I watched daytime tv for the first time in forever and saw one of those morning "news" shows, you know that one where they go outside and talk to the screaming people, Good Morning America I think. Anyhow, they did a little bit about how many resources the average person uses in a lifetime and they talked about disposable diapers. My thoughts about this rambled so long I have decided to make it a separate post - so see above.

Zoe had her two month shots today and I almost got teary. Poor thing has been hurt so few times in life so far. Wish I could always protect her from pain. I don't actually think that vaccines cause autism, and I do think that vaccines save lives. But I nevertheless couldnt help but think about it and feel a little worried...

I got a spinning composter for my birthday! Yay for the husbub who took up a collection among family. N0w to start diggin in the dirt. We have plants still in the ground from before winter...the broccoli has bloomed in lovely little yellow flowers. Who knew broccoli produced lovely little yellow flowers? But unfortunately only tomatoes and broccoli seedlings have grown, the eggplant and pepper seeds failed to rise up. shucks.

Yay for roasting marshmallows in the backyard! (see pics :)

Wishlist

While nursing (which is what I spend the vast majority of my time doing these days) I find myself dinking around the Internet (and sometimes doing research or writing. but not often.). Today I spent my time picking out the composter I would like to buy if I had 200$ in my pocket with no where to go. But one of the reasons I picked it is that 200$ is the best deal I can find, for one of these off the ground pest-resistant (urban friendly) spinning composters. We have an on-the-ground contained pile, but as we live in Baltimore it of course eventually attracted rodents (which were responsible for eating so many of our tomatoes last year). Luckily its far from our house, and so I haven't seen them, but as the evidence was there we had to abandon composting. That has seriously bummed me out as its almost spring and I have big hopes for my garden this year and the thought of buying compost is so annoying. But we have never been able to bring ourselves to shell out the money for one of these self-contained units. But its almost my birthday...

anyway, the one I have chosen is the "world's best organic compost tumbler" (with free shipping!)

baby broccoli...one more time

I finally planted the broccoli seeds that, according to my gardening schedule so lovingly put together a few months ago, were to be started the first week of February. But, of course, Zoe sprouted the first week of February, so I only just now got around to the broccoli. If they grow properly it will be the first time. I think I have never given them long enough to produce their heads. Broccoli is one of my favorite vegetables, and I suppose the best stuff takes patience, of which I have little (for example Asparagus, which takes some 7 years to grow, and obviously I have'nt bothered with). At the end of last summer I tried to stick some transplants in the ground hoping for a late fall harvest and the plants grew big and leafy and healthy looking, but without broccoli heads. Those plants are still in the garden (which was never properly dug up and covered for winter) and have been frozen and covered in snow, and now they have broccoli heads. Go figure. So they need lots of time. Thus my goal of starting the seeds so early. Oh well. We'll see what happens. And now Zoe is hungry yet again, but not for broccoli. Not quite yet.

So this is the new year

Happy 2008! I have high hopes for this year. Im making wishes for positive turns of international political and personal nature. The best and only way to start, to "be the change you want to see" if you will, is with the personal. So our house is starting 2008 with organized and cleaned closets and basement. Perhaps mundane, but I thought it was a great way to spend new years day; after sleeping in and cleaning up the zillion plates and dishes and etc from our impromptu new years eve celebration the night before, of course. In the last week of 2007 I had family visiting and with their help we have renovated the baby room - yay! Now I feel significantly more ready for the little one's arrival. Not perfectly finished or prepared, but much much better. And now it is January; just one month to go (or there abouts)! And its a month that I mostly have free to be home, which is a rare thing that I am approaching with excitement pleasure and a touch of apprehension. So overall it is an exciting month, and in lieu of yearlong resolutions I have a list of January goals:

January Goals:
1. Finish cleaning/organizing and such nesting activities such as figuring out what cloth diaper style to use, buy, and etc etc.
2. Plan the garden. Yay! I am excited for this. This will be the third year we have planted a garden, and we learn a great deal each time. This is the first year that I have requested seed catalogues instead of buying whatever packets and transplants are available at garden shops. This will be (hopefully) the first year I manage to really plant from seed instead of attempt and then end up buying transplants anyhow. Dont have much in the way of indoor sunny spots for little seeds to develop. But im giving it another shot. I am also resolving to be a more dedicated garden tender. Im really hoping to get the best harvest out of my efforts as possible this year. While gardening for the sake of gardening is fun, our budget is extra extra tight now (replacing rent-paying tenants with a baby will do that) and I am really hoping to make our harvest stretch our grocery budget.
3. Write paper for March ISA conference before the baby arrives. Buy the plane tickets and go to the conference, even if such a thought is frightening and strange as a will-be new mom.
4. Cook at home. We rarely eat out or order in, but this month as I will have time I am excited to try some new recipes and experiment with cost-saving family friendly things that will be easy and useful later. Im talking not letting anything go to waste, using dry legumes and lentils and maybe learning to bake bread that actually rises. While I love baking easy breads like banana etc, I have always been a bit frightened of the yeast rising bread baking process. Im going to give it a go.
Im looking forward to January, and the rest of 2008! I hope it brings all of you the good times I am hoping for!

Presto Pesto!

Thanksgiving was beautiful here, very warm and sunny. We took the opportunity of time and nice weather to look at our garden, which had been pretty neglected for a good long while. Once again I failed to grow broccoli. I had high hopes for my fall planting, and they seemed strong and healthy, but no heads developed. shucks. But our herb garden was over flowing with two kinds of parsley, rosemary, thyme, oregano...next year we are going to do much better at pruning and using the herbs all year long. But this year we needed to cut down that bounty and not let it go to waste - Presto Pesto to the rescue! We had made gobs of really delicious roasted almond basil pesto earlier, a recipe borrowed from inmykitchengarden, but never before had we tried parsley or rosemary. Pesto is an amazing thing. What a great way to conserve herbs for the winter. We blended parsley pinenutes lemon juice olive oil (i might leave out that lemon juice next time), then rosemary (and some more parsley) walnuts Parmesan cheese and olive oil and froze clumps on sheets of wax paper. Now those clumps are in bags in the freezer, next to the remaining un-pesto'ed herbs waiting to be thrown in winter soups/stews, used as rubs for salmon and chicken and tossed in pots of otherwise boring spaghetti sauce. yay for herb gardens!