Buggy

I’ve lately fallen under the spell of homemade sauces and soups. Eating a premade sauce from a jar or carton just seems like cheating to me (or efficient… whatever). We don’t often eat red sauces (too much pasta for bachelor Mark in college) but I wanted to make a marinara sauce to accompany baked chicken. The caveat – all the ingredients needed to be found in my cupboard because I didn’t want to make a trip to the grocery store.

I settled on this sauce because I had every ingredient (thank you AllRecipes for your ability to search with or without certain ingredients) but wanted to add fresh basil from our potted basil plant. I cut off a stalk and prepared to clip off the leaves into the blender when I noticed something odd. Some of the leaves appeared to be covered with small green dots. And they were moving.

I almost let the aphids hold a party in my marinara. I panicked and threw away the whole stalk before Mark suggested we just wash them off. So we did and the marinara was indeed basil-infused. We tossed the rest of the plant though – one less aphid stronghold.