Agree that drying it for long term storage is the best bet if you don't use it frequently in cooking. As for cooking with it fresh or dried the uses are almost unlimited or rather only limited by what you eat.

Pizza, sandwich spreads, soups and stews, with melted cheese, on fruit and in fruit drinks, with chicken or fish or pork, salads, in baking breads/rolls, etc. And pesto isn't just limited to pastas either - lots of uses for it.

Honestly if you Google 'cooking with fresh pasta' you'll find 100s of recipes.

Dave

As said above, pesto has many uses aside from pasta. You can even omit the cheese and nuts and just freeze basil-oil paste, making it more neutral for a variety of uses: on roasted vegetables, as a sandwich spread--and dropped into soup it is divine. It loses a lot when dried, so if you have the freezer space, investigate other ways you would enjoy pesto!
http://www.thekitchn.com/10-ways-to-use-pesto-beyond-pasta-tips-from-the-kitchn-119782

Thanks for the suggestions, Veeta and Dave. I am ready now to get lids for the 1/2 cup ball jars and freeze any left overs. If there are any. Love the idea of putting pesto in soups, on roasted veg, coat pork chops with pesto then coat w/ panko and bake. I try not to eat breads, but tomato season is almost here, so tomato and pesto sandwiches... oh boy I am seriously drooling.

I had a basil glut last year and mixed it with olive oil in the food processor to make a paste and then froze it. You can then add it to all kinds of recipes, sauces, casseroles, pastas, meats, etc. I got some little plastic containers just for this kind of thing. You can blanch and ice water shock or not blanch the basil. I've tried it both ways, difference is negligible. I guess blanched and then shocked is supposed to keep color better but I use in mixed up things anyway so color is not noticeable.

I dried it in the microwave last weekend. Worked like a charm. Stayed mostly a nice green. I hung some to dry a couple weekends ago and that batch turned off color.

OMG, OMG, OMG Thanks to every one's encouragement, I searched online and found a simple pesto recipe, put it on chicken breasts and baked. Thought I died and went to heaven (yeah, like that would happen). This stuff is better than I can imagine. Tonight I will try the pesto on roasted beets and turnips, because tis all I have ready from the garden. Love the idea of just a simple paste and olive oil to freeze, I defiinitely want to keep this for use all year long.

You can do this with many other herbs if you end up with a glut. Ask me how I know :)

Agreed with everyone else on the pesto.. or herb/oil paste, lol. I generally leave the cheese and nuts out too before freezing- because I can always add it in later if needed. I get a glut of nasturtiums every year, and every year I freeze up a goodly pound or three of nasturtium pesto, both blossom and leaf kinds.. It's darn fine with all sorts of cooking outside pasta. I've gotten to the point where I don't even try to "just freeze" anymore, because oil paste is so much better. I also make compound butters out of a lot of herbs too, including basil... around baking times of year like christmas and easter, butter goes on sale, and I stock it up and freeze it.. then all summer long, I make compound butters to keep in the freezer. Wild chives get a few pounds every spring, and salad burnet gets a pound or two around this time of year.

If you are the adventurous kind.. try your hand at making basil vinegar.. or basil simple syrup. Basil syrup is awesome to drizzle over baked goods instead of a glaze. It's also good in a variety of drinks, and mixed into meat glazes.. yum!

Last year I filled two large ball jars with basil leaves, and then filled them with good olive oil. I did the same with a red wine and a white wine vinegar. The basil favors the oil or vinegar, and gets preserved at the same time. I've used up almost all the oil and love the added flavor from the basil. The only (slight) downside is that once the oil level falls below the basil, the basil eventually goes moldy - but the solution is to keep it in the fridge, in which case, it seems to keep for ages! I haven't used the basil-flavored vinegars much, as I don't do much with vinegar. This year, I tried adding purple basil to olive oil. It wasn't as good as the green basil though.