A guest post from my brother Joe — a veterinarian and fellow food lover who lives in Vermont. Thanks Joe!
One of the joys of living in a rural area is the ability to purchase food directly off the farm. As a farm animal veterinarian, I also love knowing that some of the food I eat comes from animals I know and from owners whom I trust about their animal’s care. It’s also nice to have room for a large kitchen garden. Summer is the time I can put all these things together on my plate.

My garlic goes into the ground in late October – it’s the last duty before the garden goes to sleep for the winter. The bulbs will be ready to pull in late July or August, but before that, in June, they produce an edible seed head or scape. The scapes are cut off so that more energy goes to the developing bulb, but what to do with all these garlicky greens? I hate to waste anything from my garden, but one can put only so many of these tangy buds on a salad.

Recently while visiting the Middlebury Farmer’s Market, I visited a vendor who had made a pesto from his scapes. He was generous with his recipe so I decided to give it a try. I placed my scapes (around a pound or so I would guess) into a food processor with olive oil, a little lemon juice and salt. The resulting paste was a little too garlicky so I added a handful of fresh basil from my garden and some walnuts. The finished product was excellent on a pizza with fresh tomatoes and roasted red peppers cooked on our backyard grill or just dipped out on a pita chip.

Tonight I decided to take the leftovers a step further. I butterflied some boneless chicken breasts from our local poultry farm and cooked them to near doneness on the grill. Next I filled the cut breast with a layer of the pesto and a slice of Orb Weaver cheese produced by two very good friends of ours. I then finished the chicken on the grill. I served the chicken with a salad made from fresh tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil and olive oil along with a red wine from a Quebec vineyard we visited in May and a whole wheat batard from a local bakery.

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