The Swedish potato flatbread, or lefse, is popular in Minnesota, but nowhere to be found in New York. Photo by Heather Ainsworth

NOT ALL FLATBREADS are created equally, and there are no others that taste like lefse, which is made from mashed potatoes and flour and then fried in a dry skillet. In Ithaca you can find tortillas, focaccia, pita, roti, naan, and lavash, but no lefse; in Scandinavia, they thank God for their daily lefse.

Lutefisk and lefse are the staples of a hallmark Scandinavian dinner. Lutefisk is cod, salted and cured in lye. It is boiled and served with butter, salt and pepper. My dad described its flavor best: boiled snot. True. As a third-generation Swedish-American I dropped that part of my culinary heritage. Lefse, however, is in my genetic code.

To non-Scandinavians, lefse is described as tasting like shoe leather. Untrue. More like potato-flavored communion wafer. There is that distinct texture of browned flour coating the gluey mashed potato flatbread. Lefse should be flat and supple like a flour tortilla; if fried at too high a temperature, lefse turns crisp around the edges.

Swedes eat lefse faster than they can mash potatoes. It is served with a swipe of sweet cream butter across one side of the round and rolled up into a wrap for its naked Swede potato taste. Norwegians sprinkle sugar on top of the butter before rolling for a treat to eat with morning kaffee.

I have made lefse wraps with shaved roast beef, a homemade garlic dill pickle spear, and a dollop of horseradish. “Our people don’t eat lefse that way,” my mother told me. But I’ve expanded my lefse horizons. Mother’s reaction to this heresy?

“I have NEVER heard of any Swede who put a pickle in lefse.  YUK! “ she said. “You don’t want to spread wrong rumors.”

My mother’s one true gift is her talent for making lefse. It is an art. She makes more of it than any other woman I’ve ever known in my big and wide family history.

Mom took the position of all matriarchal power when she perfected lefse. Mom makes lefse for church suppers, coffees, neighbors, dad, my sister and her family and me. She sends me an entire batch for my Christmas package.

I like making lefse. There is something so rewarding about donning my apron and creating a flour dust storm in the kitchen. I participate in a tradition that connects me to those kin I know nothing about in a foreign land where there’s even less sunlight than here this time of year.

Here in New York nobody ever heard of it. Lefse. What’s lefse?

It is time to bring this potato flatbread to the fore in the Finger Lakes where potatoes are a staple. I don’t expect Wegmans will stock it any time soon, but you can tell your family and dinner guests that lefse is, if not part of our ethnic heritage, then at least in line with our regional bounty.

Potatoes grow well here in the Finger Lakes region and they are one of America’s favorite comfort foods. Wheat grows here, too. Red wheat, white wheat, spelt. I’ve discovered Cayuga Pure Organics fresh ground flours are as tasty as the Finger Lakes’ varieties of spuds. Lefse recipe variations abound in possibilities for making it part of the ever-evolving haute cuisine of foodieville, Ithaca, New York. But for me it’s the blue and the yellow of my native Swedish flag that propels this push to make lefse local.

Lefse Swedish flatbread

Ingredients:

5 cups of mashed potatoes (mashed, not whipped; not instant either)

2 Tablespoons of butter or sweet cream

2 cups of white flour

Instructions:

With flour, dust a rolling pin and a large, flat surface like a kitchen counter.

Pre-heat an electric frying pan to 375-400 degrees.

In a large bowl, add butter or sweet cream and the two cups of flour to the mashed potatoes and mix until all the flour is absorbed. If it has not yet formed itself into a ball, then add more flour, one tablespoon at a time, and stir until it has the consistency of pie crust dough.

Pinch off a golf ball size of the dough and roll out into a round much as you would a pie crust. Use flour as needed to keep the lefse from sticking to the rolling pin and surface. The flatbread should be 1/8 inch thick.

Transfer the lefse round to the skillet and watch carefully so it doesn’t burn. The lefse will begin to brown slightly and it may begin to swell up with steam before it exhausts itself. When you begin to smell burnt flour, turn it over. You’ll smell burnt potato — different from burnt flour — if you wait too long.  The lefse should be golden brown in round blobs and the rest still floury white. There is a resemblance to a good flour tortilla.

Remove the lefse round when both sides are slightly browned. Once you remove a round, let it cool on a rack for an hour. Tee hee. Like that’s gonna happen! Best served immediately like any fresh bread.

Jill Swenson lives in Brooktondale, NY. She works as a book development editor and owns On Warren Pond Farm & Seed Co., specializing in local, hand-harvested, culinary herb and heirloom flower seeds.

The annual Rutabaga Curl returns to the Ithaca Farmers Market Saturday, Dec. 18. Photo by Jerry Feist

THIS SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, the 13th annual Rutabaga Curl will be held at its usual location at the Ithaca Farmers Market. At this beloved annual event for individuals of all ages, adults and children can each take turns hefting sturdy root vegetables (locally grown, of course) across the wooden floors of the well-worn market pavilion.

The order of events remains consistent from year to year. A torch-lighting ceremony occurs at high noon, which is followed by a Parade of the Athletes, and then the Master of Ceremonies will proceed with the games. Events organizers expect a performance from the Vociferous Cruciferous chorus with its yearly rousing rendition of Handel’s “Rutabaga Chorus.”

Because many young people are attracted to the event but are unable to handle the demands of the heftier Rutabaga, a turnip toss is offered for children eight and younger. This means a smaller more delicate projectile with a throwing distance significantly shorter than the 79-foot Rutabaga Curling distance.

2009 Curl winner Steve Paisley has pronounced himself in fine shape to become the first ever “repeat Curl champion” (even though he has admitted to recently straying from his daily ritualistic bowl of mashed rutabagas). Other past Curl Champions have also claimed a shot at this years’ crown: 2008 Winner Tom “Mantooth” Mansell has proclaimed himself at the top of his game.

The Rutabaga Curl will be at Ithaca Farmers Market on Saturday, December 18. The registration table will open at 10:30 a.m. and will close at 11:45 a.m. Games will open with the 3rd annual Turnip Toss for younger contestants, and the Curl will follow with over 100 athletes competing.

Felicia's Atomic Lounge is located at 508 West State Street in Ithaca's West End. The blog "Drink My Words" is located here http://bit.ly/cIGCBC

I’M SO RELIEVED MY CSA IS OVER for the season. I’m a huge fan of the “buy local” movement, but the pressure to cook and eat vegetables has become almost unbearable.

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Regular citizens who love the idea of a garden but who don’t have yard space (or who, like me, kill every living plant thing they touch) can buy a share in a farm for the summer. The farmers grow and harvest the crops, and the CSA members get a pile of fiber-filled vegetables and a Locavore Movement, or L.M.

The problem is, I’m a mood eater, not a seasonal eater. Every week starting in late spring, we took home as much kale as we desired from our CSA, but I’m only in the mood to eat kale once every six years. I only eat beets when my mom cooks them with sugar and vinegar, I reserve my carrot intake for parties when they’re on a raw vegetable platter with French onion dip, and I can’t say I’ve ever craved rutabaga. Call me “locationally insensitive,” but in the middle of summer, my ideal snack is fresh pineapple, mangoes and chocolate.

Celeriac, broccoli raab, tatsoi, and turnips? No, thanks. Salad greens? Pass. Potatoes are a different story. Thank goodness we got plenty of spuds from our CSA because they are my ultimate mood food. Whether mashed, boiled, grilled, or French-fried, potatoes soothe my soul, much like tapioca or macaroni and cheese. But no matter how you dress it up, you can’t take salad out to the Comfort Food Ball.

Presentation affects my appetite, too. Dirty dumpling squashes tossed in bins don’t turn me on. Now if a farmer handed me a plate of butternut-pear raviolis with maple-glazed duck and rosemary sauce, I’d join that CSA in a heartbeat.

The best stuff available at my CSA this summer – green beans, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, raspberries and strawberries – were u-pick. I couldn’t find the time to dilly-dally in the field, can tomatoes or make raspberry jam (see “Do You Have a Ball Jar Addiction?” below). Though I think straw hats and retro aprons are sexy, a 1950s housewife I am not. Hand me the phone and we’ll order a pizza and crack open some PBRs. I actually bribed someone to pick my berries this year, but after she realized how much work it was, I doubt I could get away with that one again.

So we’re left with guilt: guilt for not u-picking, guilt for taking more potatoes than parsnips, guilt for composting the wilted greens hidden in reusable cloth bags in the back of the fridge, guilt for buying flowers at Wegmans rather than picking them on the farm. My CSA makes me feel bad about myself. If I really want a low self-esteem, all I have to do is plant a garden. Neglecting it comes naturally to me, costs less than a farm share, and my meager harvest leaves little leftover for the groundhogs who live in our compost pile.

Next year, I don’t think we’ll join the CSA. We’ll still eat local, but we’ll buy produce we’re in the mood for, as we need it, and when we know we’ll have time to cook it: A little eggplant here, a little corn there, and a little Viva Taqueria burrito and margarita every Friday.

Now go eat your spinach; there are groundhogs starving in Trumansburg.

*Do You Have a Ball Jar Addiction?

1) Do you feel like you always need more Ball jars, no matter how many you already have?
2) Every time you see Ball jars at the supermarket, do you have to buy a case?
3) Are Ball jars impeding the organization of your overflowing cupboards?
4) Has your partner, spouse or housemate suggested that you have a problem with Ball jars?
5) Are Ball jars interfering with your home life?
6) Have you ever gotten into financial difficulties on account of your Ball jars?
7) Does using Ball jars increase your sense of self-worth?
8 ) Do you have Ball jars hidden everywhere, like in your shop, your car, your workplace, your house, under your bed?
9) Do you need to consume something from a Ball jar at every meal?
10) Do you refuse to share your Ball jars with others, even those you love closely, especially the wide-mouth or decorative ones?
11) Have you considered canning strange things, like ground beef, cornbread or green tomato chow-chow?
12) Have you resorted to stealing Ball jars out of the neighbors’ recycling bins?

If you answered “yes” to three or more of these questions, then you have a Ball jar addiction. You need help. And you need to join a CSA.

Amelia Sauter is a freelance writer and a columnist/cartoonist for the Ithaca Post. The recipe for the “Drink My Words” column is a mix of humor, cocktails and insight, garnished with a dash of bitters and a sprinkle of wit, and concocted thanks to Felicia’s Atomic Lounge.

Felicia's Atomic Lounge is located at 508 West State Street in Ithaca's West End. The blog "Drink My Words" is located here http://bit.ly/cIGCBC

WHEN WE WERE ELEVEN YEARS OLD, my best friend Melissa and I decided we should jog. It was the 80s, and everybody was doing it. I even owned a little yellow-and-white terry cloth jogging suit. Our “jog” consisted of a ¾ mile walk-trot up the road to the shopping plaza, where we landed either at a) the donut store; b) Burger King; or c) Carvel Ice Cream.

Thirty years later, my style of exercise hasn’t changed much. I’m trying to get used to the idea that I should exercise to lower my cholesterol or to prevent cancer or because I’m 40, but I still require a reward-based motivation of some sort to move my legs faster than a lollygag.

Food remains a primary motivator for me to get off my butt, though what I consume after my workout has taken on a more grownup tone. Instead of If I jog to the plaza, I can have an ice cream, it’s now more like If I spend an hour on the treadmill of torture, I deserve a gin and tonic.

Take for example my summer hikes with my girlfriend in the National Forest: proximity to food and drink is the key. All of our hikes revolve around an accompanying sandwich and hazelnut coffee at the Grist Mill Café in Burdett. Which means we don’t walk on Sundays and Mondays when the Grist Mill is closed, nor do we walk after 3 p.m. Sometimes when we eat there, we don’t make it into the forest at all.

Though the gym is so close to my house that I can hear it laughing at me, working out eludes me, perhaps because the gym has no adjoining restaurant. However, it tempts me with television. My reward for running is an hour with the Real Housewives of New Jersey or Stephen Colbert. I’m also fostering a meaningful connection with FitTV’s Bollywood Workout babe.

If I’m going to be walking somewhere unusual, far from TV or a place to eat, like on railroad tracks or along a desolate dry creek bed, then I identify off-color reasons to keep me interested in moving. Like maybe I’ll find a dead body, which I’ve wanted to do ever since I watched Stand By Me.

My most surprising adulthood exercise initiator is a dog. As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to have any indoor pets. (Now that I’m the one cleaning the house, I understand why.) I got my first dog when I was in my early 30s, and that’s when I found out that a dog gets my ass out of the armchair where I can otherwise sit for days on end with my laptop computer.

When I ask my dog, Eesah, if he wants to go for a walk, he does a hoppy little dance like he just won the lottery. How can I resist? A walk around the block – past the same houses he’s walked by hundreds of times before, and the same lilies he always prefers to pee on, and the same squirrels he pauses to point at – is the most rewarding experience in the world to him. This exuberance is matched only by his reaction to occasional car rides and his regular daily meals, the same Purina One chicken chunks he’s eaten for the previous nine years.

Eesah eats, walks, pees, runs, sticks his head out the car window, and he’s happy. He doesn’t think to himself, I should walk today so I don’t get osteoporosis, or Let’s see, I ran six miles. That means I burned 176 calories, so I can eat all of my dog food without guilt tonight. Wait a minute, how many calories are in these chicken chunks?”

If only I were so easily pleased. The dog does not require an additional treat at the end of his efforts. The walk itself is reward enough.

Amelia Sauter is a freelance writer and the Food Editor for the Ithaca Post. The recipe for the “Drink My Words” column is a mix of humor, cocktails and insight, garnished with a dash of bitters and a sprinkle of wit, and concocted thanks to Felicia’s Atomic Lounge.

Jill Swenson has a suggestion for what to eat when it's too hot to cook anything. Photo by Heather Ainsworth

I WAKE UP SWEATING. This is as cool as I’m going to get today, I think. I lay there exhausted on waking before the sun rises. Is it dew or a fog? I’ll be in a flop sweat all day. Again.

Doesn’t take very long mowing lawn or gardening outdoors to work up a real hunger; even if the heat is nauseating. Searching under vines, I find lots of cucumbers have ripened overnight.

I’ve got one hard-boiled egg left in the fridge for breakfast. Cold comfort. Happy tummy. Makes the morning last when there’s no air conditioning and no fan. I’m certainly not going to turn on the stove to prepare meals. So what’s good to eat that soothes the stomach and doesn’t require cooking?

Take cucumber slices and spread Greek-style plain yoghurt between them, then roll the edges in freshly minced dill. It reminds me of my heritage; Swedes love cucumber sandwiches, and Grandma Swenson baked sandwich cookies with real butter and sour cream. Takes me back to cool summer memories of swinging in the backyard hammock.

Time for morning sun tea. No need to boil water. I cut a fistful of mint leaves early in the morning and toss them into a quart or gallon glass jar full of water. By placing it in the sun I have homebrewed iced tea before 10 a.m. The longer the sun infuses the mint oils into the water, the more potent the flavor.  Mint counteracts the sweltering day.

For lunch, salad from the day’s garden goodies. The Romaine style lettuces are now ready to harvest and I’m still picking arugula, spinach, and swiss for a pretty bed of greens. The sweet peppers and Sebring yellow squash are tender cut as julienne strips. Sungold cherry tomatoes and minced fresh green onions set the salad on fire. The blossoms from pansies, nasturtiums and calendula adorn the salad plate with the taste of buttery petals, peppery pods, and velvety orange and yellow confetti. Toss and serve with chilled salad dressing.

It’s time to pull out the squeaky cheese curds for a cool afternoon snack. My favorites are the sundried tomato and basil curds from Sunset View Creamery in Odessa, NY.  Yancey’s Fancy offers a killer horseradish curd, but that’s only if you subscribe to the theory that in order to feel cooler you have to get hotter.

There are those who would serve steaming hot sweet corn slathered in butter and salt for supper on a hot night like tonight. But I’m not. What am I making for dinner tonight? I’d like to make reservations, but I’m too hot to even go anywhere.

Growing up in the 1960s meant my family, like millions of others, would’ve piled into the Chevy Impala station wagon and headed to the A & W Drive-In. My sister, Barb, and I would sit in the “way way back” and hang out the window trying to catch a highway breeze. Dad would pull in, park, and order into the squawk-box like they used at outdoor movie theaters. Minutes later, out would come our burgers, fries and mugs of ice cold root beer carried by a sweet 16-year-old girl server who attached the tray to the driver’s side window. Just holding the frosty mug was a refreshment.

Tonight, Antipasto is an option. I could pull out all the pickle jars, find the good olives, slice up some cheese and pepperoni or salami, and cut up all the raw veggies. Bread and butter might be just enough to make it all work together as a meal.

Cold tuna salad sandwiches.  Tomato stuffed with egg salad. No, that would require I boil more eggs. No. Cold cuts on rye bread. Frozen cooked shrimp, barely thawed in cocktail sauce. Oops, no shrimp in the freezer.

When the heat really gets obnoxious, I know many who resort to a meal of breakfast cereal with cold milk. Dairy products, however, make my seasonal allergies and physical ailments worse, so I’m prone to finding new food combos sans milk. This summer soup recipe came to me as I stared into the fridge wasting electricity, contemplating my cold food options.

Summer supper soup for when it’s too hot to cook or do anything

One quart of tomato juice (or V-8, a personal favorite) chilled

Cut up into small pieces a sweet green pepper, a small onion, a fresh ripe tomato

Mince ½ cup of fresh cilantro

Crush one clove of garlic

Juice one lime

Mix ingredients together in a pitcher. Pour yourself a bowl of unsweetened corn flakes. (You can substitute the leftover crushed tortilla chips from yesterday’s salsa fest.)  Pour soup over flakes and serve immediately (cold). Optional garnishes: dollop of sour cream, celery sticks. Try to chill out, relax and go to sleep in this heat. Wake up and pour another bowl of cornflakes and cover with the chilled leftover soup for breakfast in case it’s too hot to do this all over again tomorrow.

Jill Swenson lives in Mecklenburg on a self-sustaining, third-generation family farm, where she sells local, hand-harvested, untreated seeds and rents eco-cabins in the summer. On Warren Pond Farm and Seed Company can be found on the web at onwarrenpondfarm.com.

Wild black raspberries, or black caps, are ripe for the picking in late June and early July. Photo by Leah Houghtaling.

By Jill Swenson

MY DESIRE FOR BLACK CAPS, the wild black raspberry, drives me into the wild, where I search through patches of poison ivy, reach into thorns, and compete with bears and birds for its precious succulence.

“Like the nipple on a wet nurse,” is the description of wild black raspberries given by Clarissa of Two Fat Ladies. The kiss of the summer solstice ripens the fruit to mark the end of spring. Black raspberries nourish the soul.

In the Finger Lakes, black caps are only in season for a week to ten days a year, near the end of  June. Not every year yields a berry bounty. They require the right kind of May, and we just had one: warm with enough rain. When the mornings are cool and the afternoons are hot and sunny, they ripen perfectly.

It’s hard to find local wild black caps for sale. Most of those available from grocers and local farmers markets are from domesticated black raspberry varieties. Black caps are to farmed raspberries what wild strawberries are to cultivated varieties: pinky fingertip-sized morsels of intense flavor to knuckle-sized nuggets of water.

In past years I tried to harvest enough wild black caps to sell at local farmers markets to my regular customers who excelled in the jam and compote competitions in Mecklenburg, Trumansburg, Odessa, Alpine, Montour Falls, Watkins Glen, Ovid, Interlaken, and Covert. As these lovely church supper ladies continued to age, their ability to pick in the wild diminished. Since they shared with me their best recipes and culinary concoctions over the years and many now lived on fixed incomes, I kept my prices comparable to the farmed berries.

A couple years ago, I spent almost two days harvesting black caps for market and happily offered $3 pints for sale.  Fifteen hours yielded 18 pints, millions of bug bites, scratches on arms and ankles and a small itchy patch on my shin. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that if I sold them all, I would make $3.50/hr.  I was thinking of all those lucky children who would fall under the black caps’ magical spell when they got a taste of the wild as their grandmothers passed on local rural culture.

Old-school instructions for black cap jam require you pick your own wild berries. Making good jam is an art, and picking fruit to perfection is the secret to its success. The picking procedures are very time-sensitive. The berries must be black; not purple, not red. This week nears the end of the picking season already, and there is only one time to pick: mid-morning.

Picking black caps. Photo by Leah Houghtaling.

The dew must lift before you begin. Wet berries tend to melt and mold before you can get them home from your stroll in the woods. The sun should be up, but not beating down on the berry bushes. June mornings are still cool enough to make it bearable to wear the long pants and long-sleeved shirt needed for protection from the thorns, prickers, and stinging pests. When the sun hits the berry, it should glow. You can tell which berries are for today’s picking. Some look flat-black and dry; they’re done, so leave them for the birds. Take only the best ones. Like wet India ink, they should be shiny black. Their vitality makes them jump out at you. When you touch the berry, it should pop off as easily as a bottle cap. If you have to tug, the berry isn’t ready to be picked. Come back tomorrow.

When picking wild black caps, bring along a shallow pan to hold them. Don’t fill it more than an inch deep or they will crush under their own weight. It is tempting to try to pick more than one berry at a time. Try taking two and both are squished. They demand to be plucked one by one. You can catch a greedy berry picker red-handed; the stains of smushed fruit provide the evidence in the palm of the hand.

Black caps and wild morel mushrooms are ready to pick the same week. It’s no surprise that you will find them both on local seasonal menus in late June and early July. Morels also love the cool mornings, frequent gentle spring rains, and come June, stifling heat and humidity. Down back along the creek I walk through, a misty afternoon is perfect for hunting these rare delicacies you cannot buy.

A really good black cap picking patch lies down in a hollow behind my farm where no one else can see or hear me. I look for the flowering wild roses as my field marker to this secluded location for prime picking. I hold a big pan of raspberries and move toward them. Once, I stepped into a groundhog hole and turned my ankle; the berries flew up and all over, and I ended up on my back in the middle of a rosa rugosa.

The distinctive feature of this wild rose is the thorns point downward, not upward like domesticated roses. I fell backwards into Mother Nature’s barbed wire. When I tried to sit up, the thorns took hold of my ponytail and wouldn’t let go. The more I struggled, the worse I was caught up in the thorny trap.

“Use some common sense.” I saw the smile creep across Sam’s face as I heard my lover’s laughing voice in my head.

If the thorns were going in the opposite direction, I needed to stop pulling against them and push back. Stop struggling and release.  I lay back and let go. Give up. Get up. Giggle. Good belly laugh.

All those black caps disappeared into thin air. I’d spent so many hours selecting each specimen in its prime. How much time in a lifespan can I spend in the woods, in silence, foraging fruit? If I lived to a hundred years, I would only have a month of days devoted to black caps. The memories make the fruit sweeter.

Wild black raspberry bushes. Photo by Leah Houghtaling.

OLD-SCHOOL BLACK CAP JAM

Pick 4 cups of wild black raspberries.

Remove all stems and green matter. Rinse berries with water gently.

Put all the berries into a 4 quart saucepan, crushing the lower layer with the back of a spoon to provide a bit of moisture before more is drawn from the fruit by heat. Simmer the fruit uncovered, until soft.

Add 3 cups of white sugar. Do not use substitutes. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring the fruit mixture to a boil and continue to stir, making sure no sticking occurs. Reduce the heat and cook uncovered until it begins to thicken. Sometimes it takes as long as half an hour for jam to thicken. Allow for additional thickening as it cools, but it should not be runny. Cook until a small amount dropped on a plate will stay in place.

Pack the fruit while hot into hot sterilized jars. Seal and wait 24 hours before serving.

This recipe works for gooseberries, loganberries, and elderberries when making jam. Don’t try to double the recipe if you are lucky enough to have 8 cups of black caps. Make them in separate batches.

Makes two pints of jam.

Note: Jams are made from the whole fruit. Jelly is made from the fruit’s juice only. This recipe is not for those who have dentures where seeds can be lodged and cause pain. I suggest taking your teeth out and enjoying it on hot buttered white toast or in a bowl of oatmeal. I do not recommend removing the seeds or using the juice only. The seedy and pulpy fruit has natural pectin which helps “set” the jam and gives it a distinctive flavor and texture.

Jill Swenson lives in Mecklenburg on a self-sustaining, third-generation family farm, where she sells local, hand-harvested, untreated seeds and rents eco-cabins in the summer. On Warren Pond Farm and Seed Company can be found on the web at onwarrenpondfarm.com.

The early summer is the perfect time for pesto, which may be made with either garlic or garlic scapes, and a wide variety of greens, from arugula or spinach to herbs like parsley, mint or the old standby, basil. Photo by Katie Church

PESTO: IT’S NOT JUST FOR BASIL ANYMORE. Basil pesto is unarguably amazing, and come August there’s nothing better. In the meantime, I invite you to join me in unleashing a variety of pesto. You won’t be disappointed.

The word pesto comes from the Latin pestare, ‘to crush’, as in a mortar and pestle. Pesto is a paste that contains, at the least, salt, olive oil, garlic and a pungent green,. It is ubiquitous in Mediterranean cooking, though with slight variations of ingredients and name. Many variations contain nuts and sharp, aged cheese, such as Parmesan. Pesto can be used as a sauce for pasta and as an addition to many other dishes: sandwiches, meat, seafood, roasted or grilled vegetables, omelets, soup, salads, and more.

Possible pesto greens include spinach, kale, mint, parsley, basil, mustard and turnip greens and arugula. Pesto can be raw, if the nuts are not toasted, and vegan, if the cheese is left out. To accommodate someone with a nut allergy (or if you don’t have any on hand), it can be made without nuts, as a French pistou. It is delicious with or without all of the possible additions, and I find that if it has at least a flavorful green, olive oil, salt and garlic, I don’t really miss the other ingredients.

You can make pesto with either garlic cloves or garlic scapes. Garlic scapes are flower heads sent up by the garlic plant in June. Scapes are cut off so the plant focuses its energy on growing a nice plump bulb, rather than seeds. They have a mild garlic flavor that lessens with cooking. Steamed scapes taste like green beans, whereas raw ones have quite a garlicky bite.

Garlic is propagated by planting one clove per desired bulb in early winter, before the ground is frozen. It is harvested the following late July or early August. It is possible, but much more difficult, to grow garlic from the seeds that would grow in the scape’s flower.

Start your pesto by packing the bowl of a food processor with your green on hand. Add garlic, either peeled cloves or chopped scapes.  Choose a nut based on what you think would go well with the greens. The nuts may be raw or toasted.The nuts may also be soaked, but they don’t have to be; if I’m using raw seeds, I often like to soak them for at least an hour before using them for a lighter, creamier result. Nuts are best unsalted, so that you retain control over the saltiness of the pesto. Pine nuts are traditional in pesto alla Genovese, the common traditional basil pesto. Pine nuts are delicious, very light and fatty, and expensive. Walnuts are a good substitute, and easier on the pocket. Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds work well in milder pestos. Almonds and hazelnuts are also good choices.

It is wonderful beyond belief to pull pesto out of the freezer in January: a sudden vibrant splash of summer on the taste buds. With or without the cheese in it, pesto freezes well. Fill small zip-lock bags (snack size), squeezing the air out, or fill a half pint mason jar, topping it off with a smidge of olive oil to protect it from freezer burn. Label your goodies, because as much as you think you’ll never forget what’s in them, trust me, you will.

Arugula Garlic Scape Pesto

Note : My hope is that you will use this recipe as a jumping point, and discover delicious new pesto combinations throughout the summer.

2-3 cups of arugula

3-4 garlic scapes cut into 2-inch sections (later in the season use 2-3 peeled garlic cloves). You can always add more, if you are looking for a stronger garlic flavor.

¾ cup raw sunflower seeds, covered in cool water and soaked for 1-2 hours, then drained

About 1 cup olive oil

½ cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (optional)

Salt to taste

Fill your food processor or blender (food processors are better for the job) with arugula. Add the sunflower seeds, ½ teaspoon of salt, and scapes.  Start the machine, and drizzle in olive oil while it is running. Blend while adding oil, until it reaches a consistency you like.  Taste the pesto, and add more salt or garlic to taste. Stir in the cheese. Keep in my mind that if you are adding cheese, cheese is salty.

Pesto will keep in a covered container in the fridge for about a week (if it gets darker on top, it’s okay. Just stir before using).

For the romantics:

Pestos can be made using elbow strength and a mortar and pestle. Start with the greens and salt, add the garlic after you’ve creamed the greens pretty well, and chop the nuts finely with a knife before adding.  The salt will draw liquid from the greens, helping to cream them.