Pesto Chicken and Roasted Veggies

I finally got around to harvesting a bunch of my basil, which has been growing like crazy and starting to go to seed.
 

About Four Cups of Basil

I made a big batch of Pesto, using almonds instead of pine nuts, some Parmesan cheese, a few tomatoes and olive oil.

Then I marinated some chicken breast - I decided to splurge and buy locally grown organic chicken, which is about three times the cost of the chicken we usually buy on sale.

I also decided to make a roast vegetable dish to accompany the chicken, so I made a dressing from fresh herbs, red onion, garlic and lime juice:

And mixed it with a variety of chopped vegetables (red and green peppers, asparagus, carrots, tomatoes), which I roasted in the oven:

I browned about half the chicken with onions and garlic and then added some homemade stock and white wine to finish it off.  Then served it with a side of the roast veggies:

The chicken in particular was amazing - using the organic chicken made a huge difference.  Luckily, we still have a batch of marinated chicken left over for another meal.

Tackling the Front

For the past few weekends I've been spending a lot of time in the backyard, mostly just trying to clean things up.  This has resulted in numerous bags and tree limbs sitting in front of my house awaiting pick-up:

Yesterday, I spent a few more hours prepping the side veggie plot - adding some compost and manure and raking it all in - getting it all ready for these babies when they're big enough:

Today, I decided to tackle the front yard, which has been sadly neglected.

I think of the front yard as being divided into three areas, all of which came with the plants shown in the photos when we bought the house in July  2011.

The Front Lawn (with Ugly Tree):

The Front Left plot:

 The Front Right plot:

Today, I spent several hours raking and bagging old dead leaves from the front lawn and both plots.  Since the Front Left plot gets a lot of light, I decided to throw caution to the wind and plant some veggie seeds directly in the plot, around the existing plants.  I dug around in the soil, threw in some amendments, watered and planted some seeds: two types of lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, and carrots.  Who knows if anything will actually grow, but I figured it was worth a try.

Here is how it looked afterwards:

Location of Lettuce and Swiss Chard

Location of Carrots and Spinach

It's amazing how you can spend hours and hours working in the garden and afterwards you're like - hmmm, it doesn't look all that different from when I started.