Rosie Uses Up Her Leftover Pizza Dough.

The wind's been kicking up here a bunch, so I went out to pick a bunch of basil leaves before they got torn all to pieces.

A nice batch of pesto seemed in order. First, I processed 4-5 garlic cloves, grated parmesan cheese and the basil leaves along with olive oil.

Then I added pecans which I prefer over pine nuts.

Drizzle in the olive oil while processing.

I always taste as I go along. Needed more parmesan and nuts.

And a bit more olive oil.

And that's the consistency and taste I want.

I reserved a little bit of pesto for my upcoming breadsticks, and spooned the rest into ice trays, covered and froze it. After freezing, pop the pesto blocks into a freezer bag and you have individual servings.

I poured boiling water over sun-dried tomatoes. After the pizza dough I made the other day, I had saved half the loaf, wrapped it in plastic, and refrigerated it, until I could figure out what I wanted to make with it.

Here's the loaf right out of the fridge. It was still trying to rise in the plastic. I kneaded it again for about 10-15 minutes, then covered with plastic and a damp, hot towel, and left it to rise several hours in the microwave.

And here's my dough.

The punch down. As always, my favorite part.

My dough, chopped, softened, and drained sun-dried tomatoes, and my reserved pesto.

I gradually kneaded in the tomatoes and the pesto.

I rolled the bread out and placed it on oiled baking sheets, sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese, and let rise.

A quick bake at 350 degrees - maybe 25 minutes - until nice and crunchy.

Serve with homemade blue cheese dressing : mayo sour cream cream garlic chives salt and pepper

The blue cheese is a wonderful complement to the pesto and sun-dried tomatoes.

I didn't use all the dough for the bread sticks. I saved half for rosemary focaccia.

I spread the dough, thinly, on a greased baking sheet, then gave it a liberal grinding of sea salt and black pepper and added the rosemary and a drizzling of olive oil. Let it rise for a little bit.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Salty, crunchy, herby goodness. Next, Mr. Hawthorne got out a couple of crab cakes he'd made and frozen the other day.

Just to give you an idea of the size of his crab cakes, here's a large Roma tomato for comparison.

Mr. Hawthorne melted some butter, added olive oil, then lightly sauted the crab cakes over medium heat.

And here's dinner. Crab cakes with homemade tartar sauce and remoulade, cole slaw, and basil/sun-dried tomato breadsticks with blue cheese dressing.

Sweet, delicious crab cakes with big chunks of crab meat. The tartar and remoulade sauces are nice tangy accompaniments. Doesn't get much better than this.