Wondering what else you can do with your basil? Here's a delicious (and colorful!) meal that's not only simple, but somewhat cool for these 100 degree days. I am sure you can make lots of variations of this idea, so I will just give you the basics of what I did and you can use your own creativity from there.... :)
Pasta salad with basil, tomatoes, mozzarella and northern beans (yes, really, northern beans!!)
Ingredients:
pasta
great northern beans, rinsed and drained
basil
fresh garlic cloves
olive oil
cherry tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
shredded mozzarella cheese
1) Marinate your basil in a bag with 1/2 to 1 cup of olive oil (depending on how much pasta you're making). Add to the bag your cherry tomatoes, garlic cloves, and salt/pepper.
2) Cook your pasta. At about 5 minutes left, add your beans to your pasta. Drain. At this point, you can either rinse your pasta with cold water to get it cool faster, or just let it sit. (In my case, I just let it sit for half an hour because I was busy getting other things done and my sink was already full of dirty dishes... :-/ ) **Personally, I don't like COLD pasta salad, so I didn't want to put it in the fridge. I thought it was perfect slightly cooled, so that it wasn't steaming, but it was warm enough to heat up the tomatoes a bit when they were added.
3) Once the pasta and bean mixture has cooled slightly, add your marinade. You can either add your shredded mozzarella cheese here, or let everyone at the table do that part themselves.
That's it! I'm sure many of you would think of this more as a side dish, so feel free to make it that.... but in my house, I make my family go without. :-P hahahaha! I'm sure having a side salad would have been great, but meh, that's more work. I figure, this had something green, a vegetable, carbs (which is necessary for my hypoglycemic son) and even good protein from the beans and cheese. That's good enough for me. And maybe, when it's 104 degrees at your house, it will be good enough for you too..... ;-)
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