Ever since we moved back into our home here in sunny South
Florida I’ve been working on my green thumb. My husband and I planted tomatoes,
peppers, squash, watermelon, cilantro, parsley, thyme… a little bit of
everything.
Unfortunately, mostly everything has died and I realized
gardening is a lot harder than it looks! For some reason though, my small
little basil plant has turned into a full blown bush and I am stoked about it.
I took a picture of it to show my yiayia while I was
visiting family because I was super proud that I didn’t kill it and that it was
flourishing. Good thing I showed my yiayia the picture because I found out
those pretty little flowers that the basil plant grows after some time actually
stunts the growth of your plant. So, obviously the first thing I did when I got
back home was trim my basil plant!
The second thing I did was brainstorm on what the heck I’m
going to do with this huge bush of basil and the first thing that came to mind
was pesto! You need a good amount of fresh basil to make pesto so since my
plant is so full I really want to take the opportunity to use it.
Pesto is so light, refreshing, and versatile you really can
use it for dinner every night of the week in a new way. I’m probably going to
use the basil with chicken, pasta, pizza, or even just grab some chips and dip
it. Whatever I do with it, it’s just so handy to have a jar of fresh basil in
my fridge!
*Ingredients
3 full cups of basil
3-4 cloves of garlic
Zest from one lemon
Juice from one lemon
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup pine nuts
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
Salt/pepper to taste
*Directions
Put basil, roughly chopped garlic, lemon juice, lemon zest,
pine nuts, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese in your food processor. Depending
on the texture you want your pesto to be, either turn on your food processor or
put it on pulse until your desired texture is achieved. I personally just
turned on my food processor and let the pesto become smooth. Once you get your
pesto where it needs to be give it a taste and add any more of the ingredients
you’d like. I personally added a little extra lemon juice, cheese, salt, and
pepper.
Enjoy!
**Note: you can also use pistachios or cashews for the pesto
as well
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