Basil and Creativity

Clipped basil re-rooting along with coasters I won in a contest by Enid of Steamy Darcy.

This year, none of the tomatoes were successful. But the basil exploded, witness the photo above, these are the leftovers. So what to do with all the basil? Ah, and there's the link to increasing creativity, because after using it in spaghetti sauce and in tomato cucumber salad and giving it away to friends...what's next?

Here's a few of the recipes I created:

First, preserving it:
Rinse the basil, chop fine and bottle with olive oil. Can use as is for the basil flavor alone or add garlic, onion, pepper, lemon, etc. and make salad dressing. Keep refrigerated when not using.
Hang it upside down and dry it, although this is my least favorite way of preserving it. It loses a lot of flavor, IMO.
My favorite: Rinse the leaves and put whole into a plastic bag and freeze. When the basil is frozen, crunch it up in the bag into little bits and use. A thank you to my s.o. Bruce for this, it works great.

Now for three recipes:
Add basil to any curry to make it "Thai" style.
Basil is great added to any Chinese dish, especially fried rice and chicken dishes.
Add basil to ground chicken or any ground meat when making meatloaf.
Puree basil with garlic and butter or margarine and spread on a halved French bread loaf, bake in oven (low temp or the basil will burn) for a twist on garlic bread.
And my favorite:
Tomato Basil soup:
2 cups of tomatoes (for spicier soup, can use 1 cup green tomatoes)
2 cups milk
1/2 cup of basil (it will taste strong)
Tablespoon of olive oil
2 tablespoons nutritious yeast (optional)
touch of pepper (optional)
Puree tomatoes. Heat olive oil in soup pan and add tomato puree and cook 5-8 minutes then add slowly the 2 cups of milk and simmer for 10 minutes, then add basil, yeast and pepper and simmer another 10 minutes. Soup will be thin, if you like thicker add 2 tablespoons of flour when adding milk and stir well. And my disclaimer: I'm not a professional chef so your results may vary.

Now the creativity piece--I discovered that having such a wealth of one thing, basil, led me to be creative in how I thought about basil. It became much more than "one of the spices that goes into spaghetti." It expanded and took on a more complex role in my cooking in some unexpected ways. And showed me a way to be more creative in my writing. With a character, for example, expand the character so it becomes more complex and then use the character in unexpected ways. Same is true for the plot--try thinking of it as many different ways as possible, play the what if game. What's an unexpected event? Another? Twist and turn the elements of your creativity and then jump out of boxed in expectations to another level.

Anybody got any other recipes for basil? How about a story where a plethora of whatever led to more creative thinking?