Summer time and feeling fine.

The summer equinox has just passed and so has the first wedding of the season. The garden is coming along quite nicely and find myself showing my partner my little plants that are growing day by day. He laughs and attempts to care about my love for vegetables.

Finished product!

Long days and warm weather means that barbecue season is here. My Dad arrived home yesterday from his current job out east in Newfoundland and like all me, he loves burgers. I made caprese turkey burgers and YUM! These burgers are flavourful and packed with cheesy goodness in the middle. They were a gift from the burger gods. Fresh basil, tomatoes and mozzarella in every bite made for an extremely satisfying meal every single bite.  

Although the burgers were slightly time consuming to make because every single burger was two patties that had to have the centres stuffed it was totally worth it!  I'll be doing it again so we can stock up the freezer with these tasty alternatives to the traditional beef burger. Found the recipe on Pinterest again from quickfoodrecipes.org. I did not include bacon bits and replaced the ground beef with ground turkey but ground chicken would work well too.

Pull off that barbecue cover, fire up the grill and enjoy!

Presto pesto.

Few ingredients make summer fresh pesto.

The rain seems to have subsided for a couple days at least and was able to get in the garden and harvest buckets of basil.


In the past I have attempted at growing herbs from seeds but have had no luck starting them indoors as they get attacked by all kinds of ailments. To make my gardening life a little easier I cheat and buy my basil plants early in the spring and plop them in the ground next to my seeds. Luckily this year the plants were growing like weeds. Who wants to weed when the sun is shining and the pool looks so tempting?!

Blended in a food processor.

I don't want my basil plants to go to seed for two reasons: they slow down growing and tend to make the leaves taste more bitter. I made my first batch of pesto to keep up with the amount of basil this year. Since my tomatoes won't be ready until August caprese salads will have to wait. (insert sad face here) 

Pesto is a great to have on hand once winter comes when we need to be reminded of all of the goodness that summer provides. I use it in pasta, pesto aioli, dressings and to even make fish less fishy.  

I've used Jamie Oliver's recipe without the lemon juice and pour the pesto into ice cube trays or little muffin tins and freeze overnight. I pop them out and store in ziploc bags in the freezer when I need a little summer love in my food.