Adjusting process, even slightly

Today we harvest the basil from the herb garden and turn it into pesto. The results will be separated in to serving sizes and then frozen.  We’ve been growing basil for over ten years, so each step is now quite familiar.

We will be adding a new step this year before chopping the leaves, that will take only about thirty seconds, and it  will lead to a notable improvement in our result: blanching.  This is done by throwing the leaves into boiling water for about thirty seconds and results in the pesto keeping a fresh green color.  Without blanching browning occurs.

It’s always exciting when a slight adjustment in an process leads to a better result.  It’s why I fiddle so much with this blog and try new things each and every week.  One slight change that has led to drastic improvement in reader engagement has been the addition of random posts with images instead of solely using the recent post widget.  Providing portals into the deepest recesses of this content stream has translated into keeping that content green for many readers.

Who wants brown posts, or pesto?