four green pesto

Sometimes I don't get the right amount of greens that I should every day. While I'm not a fan of light colored lettuce like iceburg (to me, it's worthless.) i'm a huge fan of dark leafy greens like arugula & spinach. Lucky for me, those are the best types of greens to eat. While I'm working on making sure that every meal I eat includes an array of colors (i'm a recovering 'white food kid'), eating greens is (most of the time) boring. So this is where pesto comes in handy.

Pesto is delicious, garlicky & nutty magic. I've found that store bought pesto is almost always barf-worthy. No matter what the brand, it always seems to have a mysterious taste with an even more mysterious ingredients list. Pesto is quite possibly one of the easiest things to make, so why should it's ingredients label list be outrageously long with chemicals & other crap I can't even pronounce? It's kind of silly.

The best store bought pesto that I've ever had is Le Grand Garden Pesto

The packaging is so beautiful and striking, but what's really striking is the aroma that hits you as soon as you open it. It literally smells like you are walking through a basil garden. The ingredients are simple but the price tag is not. It's around $8 for a package of this and if you're like me, on a 20 something budget, that's not cutting it. If you don't have time to make the pesto from scratch, it's a good investment to get this kind. The unique packaging makes it easier for the pesto to last a bit longer in the fridge also. So if you're going to go with store bought, go with the best. Don't go with the crap.

But let's get back to the D.I.Y approach.

To make Four Green Pesto this is what you'll need:

-A bunch* of:

Basil

Spinach

Arugula

Green Onions (5 stalks cut up)

-Juice of one lemon

-Extra virgin olive oil

-3 chopped garlic cloves

-1/2 cup of almonds

-1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

-Dried herbs & spices

Salt & Pepper

Red Pepper Flakes (one dash/pinch)

Oregano flakes (three dashes/pinches)

*when I say a 'bunch', i mean to just eyeball how much you think is necessary.

Once all of the ingredients are washed & chopped, add them gradually into the food processor. First blend two of the greens (ex: basil & spinach) with some garlic and olive oil to get it into a smooth consistency. Once it's somewhat of a sauce/paste, add the next two greens until that is smooth as well. Throw in the rest of the ingredients & squeeze the lemon juice at the end. Give it one last blend and then let sit for about 10 minutes. Chill it immediately until it's ready for use.

The options are endless for pesto. Throw it on basically anything you want. It's the savory version of nutella, if you ask me. It makes any meal a bit more interesting. Here's how I used it the past couple of days:

-chopped yellow onion, organic quinoa, pesto, corn, arugula & diced apple.

-Pesto, a sprinkle of parmesan cheese folded into a pastry puff with black pepper on top. baked at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. (the "before" picture is at the top of the post)