Would you like some basil with that?

So last week I came home from work with plans to make this Grilled Chicken with Lemon Basil Pasta, and I went outside to cut some basil and found this:

I made the pasta anyway. It was OK, but my cream sauce didn't really thicken. But the point of this story is that my basil has failed me.

Then I got an email from my co-op offering basil by the pound. Of course I immediately ordered a pound for myself. At the time I did not consider how much a pound of basil was or the fact that I was already getting some basil in my share. So on Saturday I picked up this with my share:
 

Then this box that contained the pound of basil:
 

And then one of the employees at my pick-up offered to let me have some less-than-perfect basil that would be fine for pesto. So I also came home with this:
 

So I spent much of Saturday making pesto and chopping basil to freeze.

I made four variations of pesto; here are the ingredients and my opinion on them. (I just threw everything in the food processor.):
 

Pesto #1

•  2 cups (packed) fresh basil leaves
•  1/4 cup walnuts
•  1 garlic clove
•  1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
•  1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
•  About 2/3 cups extra virgin olive oil

I found this one to be very oily, but I think it will work well with pasta.

Pesto #2

•   1/4 cup olive oil
•   1/2 cup pine nuts
•   2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
•   1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
•   4 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
•   1/4 tsp. salt
•   Black pepper

This one was extremely strong. At first I thought it was all the garlic but after making the other variations, I realized it was the pine nuts. I'm glad to know I don't prefer pine nuts in my pesto because they are expensive.   

Pesto #3

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• Black pepper

This is the same as #2 but with walnuts, not pine nuts and less garlic (also in minced form). This is probably my favorite of all of them, but I have now frozen all but about 1/2 cup of #2 so I will probably never figure out which one is which.

Pesto #4

•   1/4 cup olive oil
•   1/2 cup walnuts
•   2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
•   4 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
•   1/4 tsp. salt
•   Black pepper

This is the same as #3 but with more garlic (fresh this time) and no cheese. This one was pretty good and might be my second favorite.

So I would have "fresh" basil for recipes like the one above, I froze the rest of it. The tip from my co-op was to wash and chop the basil (I used kitchen shears to chop) and coat it lightly with olive oil. Then I put it in my ice tray and stuck it in the freezer. It is now in a freezer bag, ready for me to pull out and use in recipes.

If you're in the area and need some basil or pesto, let me know, I have plenty to spare!