It’s hard to believe that summer Is officially arriving soon. The past two months have been spent like most of the country living in quarantine. In many ways our lives remained the same, spending quality time at home reading and preparing the garden inside with seedlings. But in many ways, it offered great change. When the pandemic was approaching, decisions had to be made to stock up on food that could carry us through a month or two to limit us from having to go to the grocery store and risk contamination. That meant purchasing food completely different from what we were used to. Our usual purchases consisted of regular trips to the store to buy fresh ingredients. Now I found myself struggling with how to get quality ingredients to the table while keeping my family safe. Not only do those ingredients have to be good tasting, they also must be gluten-free because of my daughter who was home from college. My shopping consisted of anything I could get my hands on gluten-free from in-home delivery right as the pandemic was about to hit us. So boxes would arrive daily on our front porch that would have to be sprayed with Lysol or remain outside for two days just to be on the safe side.
On top of this, we were in the process of moving to our dream home, a former B&B on the Delaware River, built in the mid-1800’s. This was conditioned on the sale of my current home.
We had dug up our garden boxes preparing for the big move only to find ourselves refilling some of them in case the pandemic caused our closings of the old and new home to be delayed.
Fortunately we had found a local farm that sold fresh produce, cheese and meats while maintaining social distancing standards.
As the closing date approached, so many things became uncertain. Would we be able to close on time? Would we have to cancel the movers and move everything ourselves? Yes, we would. A few days before the scheduled closing we were told officially we were closing, so the final packing began. Arrangements were made to have appliances delivered & installed into the new house. Utilities had to be operational and ready to go on day one since both of the kids were now home due to the quarantine and had only online classes daily.
April 17th the big day came. We had a fun camp out in our living room for the last night and woke up in the morning shoving all remaining possessions into our cars, took our last photos in the front yard for memory sakes, and said goodbye to our house, eagerly embracing the new and exciting next chapter. Happy but also nervous of having to do both closings successfully or we would be homeless in the middle of an epidemic, the universe came through and guided us smoothly through.
Two months later we have settled into our new home and have had some great transformations on the house. The new culinary gardens have been installed and are taking shape. One of my favorite additions is our large herb garden. I absolutely love fresh herbs and almost 100 percent of the time I incorporate them into my recipes. Forget buying flowers or fancy gifts, this girl just is just as happy with herbs. Todd has been constantly surprising me with new herbs to expand our garden. One that excited me the most was this beautiful Boxwood Basil plant. It's slightly different from traditional basil with a sweet and spicy flavor. Not only is the flavor great, it makes a great ornamental plant in your garden. Leaves can be used directly in recipes without the need to cut them because of their size, making for less prep work in the kitchen.
Here I used the Boxwood Basil to create a light, healthy and fresh dressing that perfectly pairs with so many things. From salads, to tuna fish to steaks, this dressing has so much flexibility on how it can be paired with other foods. I have to admit that Todd & I even found ourselves eating this by the spoonfuls and dipping our fingers into the little leftovers there were after dinner. It‘s that good! The secret to this recipe is the balance of sweet, tangy, spicy and creamy. Its a whirl wind in your mouth. The dash of red pepper flakes can be adjusted to your family’s preferences. The creaminess comes from the spoonful of mascarpone cheese added to it. It's lighter and creamier than cream cheese that you could certainly substitute it. Also, the mascarpone blends easier into the other ingredients than plain cream cheese.
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