i *heart* basil

This semester I'm taking a course called 'The Essay' in the graduate writing program at the university where I work. It entails writing numerous essays as assignments, as the title suggests. I'm having fun writing essays, but with a revved up writing schedule I'm finding less time and energy to devote to writing blog posts. So for now I'll post this little ditty I wrote for class last week. Enjoy!
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In Praise of Basil

If there’s one scent of which I’ll never tire, it’s basil. At the moment, my laundry soap, all-purpose cleaner and body lotion are all scented with it. The effect is a sharp, clear aroma in my clothes and around the house. I’ve read that, aroma-therapeutically, basil is considered to increase productivity and to help relieve stress. It’s fitting, then, that the hand-cream I keep in my desk at work is basil-scented.

Not only does basil smell good, it tastes good in everything I season with it. If a recipe calls for a fresh green herb like parsley or chives, I throw in some basil instead, usually with great success. I’m known to finish off a sauce or a stew with a handful of the fresh green stuff. This reassuring little herb hasn’t failed me yet, and I tend to wonder if there’s anything basil wouldn’t complement.

To be clear, I don’t confine my use of basil to mere seasoning or garnish – I make a wide variety of dishes with it. One of my favorites is Caprese salad, with fresh mozzarella balls, succulent plum tomatoes, whole plucked basil leaves and generous amounts of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It’s a quintessential summer dish – sharp and refreshing. Another favorite basil dish is what my local Thai restaurant calls “Holy Basil Stir-fry.” Although it calls for an Asian basil varietal, I use regular sweet basil as a substitute. The peanut oil and soy-sauce allow the basil to infuse itself into the sauce and its flavor is magnified to a surprisingly spicy simplicity. Versatile, user-friendly basil, employed on opposite sides of the globe, is a uniting force for such geographically disparate cuisines as Italian and Thai. Hard-working and well-traveled are added to the list of basil’s virtues.

Basil reassures in the garden as well as in the kitchen. Cut it back to harvest some sprigs for dinner and it grows in bushier. I can inadvertently neglect the plants I’m growing, but basil seems to last a good while without rain or watering, which my forgetfulness unfortunately inflicts upon it from time to time. I take heart at this little plant’s resilience, and feel blessed by its ability to persistently bestow its gifts.

I first grew my own basil in the garden-farm behind our house in equatorial Africa. The climate there produced perfect growing conditions year-round, and it was a thrill to watch the tiny seeds I sowed morph into tiny plants, then bigger plants, and finally the familiar herb from home. The plants grew so quickly and so well that I could pick basil for every meal I cooked and never run out. It was heavenly.

Back in America, when we bought a house the first summer I planted basil plugs I had bought from the hardware store out in the back yard. They provided flavorful leaves all summer long and we had so much at the end of the season that we made several batches of pesto for the freezer. It gave me a sense of self-sufficiency to be making my own food, especially a food that’s expensive when you buy it pre-made at the store. It also made me feel connected to the farm wives of the last century who, come every harvest season, preserved and canned the fruits of their labor to put up for the winter. Those fruits would assure sustenance for their families through the lean months of the year. Growing our own food in this modern, urban present provides a connection to our agrarian past.

Growing basil has made me feel self-sufficient, no doubt, but this summer basil brought me a new way to connect with my community. In the spring we agreed to split a CSA farm-share with our neighbor across the street. Fresh veggies began arriving weekly in mid-June and will continue into October. Even though I didn’t grow my own basil this year, there were huge bunches of it in the farm-share box each week of June and July, providing an abundant supply, even when split in half. Every Thursday evening I have a standing date with my neighbor to gather and divvy up our bounty. The veggie date guarantees that we two busy women with busy lives will have at least one opportunity a week to build our neighborly friendship, which is the basic connection that ties communities together.

The couple that runs the farm supplies fresh vegetables all summer long, with recipes for how to use them, and each fall they host a gathering of sharers out at the farm. In true communal style, the invitation asks each participant to bring a potluck dish, and of course they can feature the latest veggies from the share box. The event gives us city-folk a chance to tour the land that produces our food and to meet the farmers themselves – such rare personalities these days. There will be live music, fall colors, and the convivial camaraderie of sharing fresh food. I’d wait a long time to get any such invitation from the industrial agro-business complex.

In Europe, people go to the market every day to buy fresh food for the meal they will prepare that night. When French people buy fresh herbs like basil, they never go to waste, are never left to wilt and rot at the bottom of a fridge drawer. Grocery shopping for the French requires social interaction – they pay separate visits to the butcher, the fishmonger, the fruit stand and the bakery. By its very nature, buying food in France directly supports local vendors and local farmers. It is a cultural practice rooted in the agrarian past, and that past is kept alive in every day routines. The availability of and demand for fresh food in France contributes to a high quality of life, and it puts our frozen fast food nation to shame. But take heart! We can demand our own fresh food revolution in this country. My contribution to it will begin with a small plot of basil, growing cheerfully in my back yard.

why does your house smell so bad in the first place?

I was flipping through an O magazine this morning, and I saw three full-page ads for different odor-reducing products: a spray, a plug-in, and a candle-inside-a-pretty-box thingie. Wow, I thought, there seem to be a lot of odor reducers on the market these days.

What I want to know is, to whom are these products being marketed? And who buys them? And why do they need them? If your house smells so bad that you need to plug in an artificial scent producer in every room, wouldn’t you try cleaning the house first? Are these products meant to be band-aids to keep people from addressing the real problem of having to do house work? Like, if I just cover up the smell of my overflowing trash cans, then I don’t have to take them out and I’ll have more time to sit around reading O magazine? What gives?

And why do we need products to improve the smell of our homes that are meant to be tossed into landfills when they run out of their chemical scent? What happened to just plain opening the windows? Or baking something that will send good smells throughout the house? Or baking soda? Or, like I said before, cleaning up your house from time to time? Seriously people, why does your house smell so bad in the first place?