Pesto Palooza

Happy Monday!

I hope you all had a good weekend. We did. It was full of friends and fun – and a little date night for SuperMan and I as well. So nice.  We went to a local German restaurant and the food was incredible.  We enjoyed our dinner so much, lingering over our food with just one more glass of wine and some great conversation, that we totally missed our movie!  It was just as well. I told SuperMan I’d rather sit and talk with him than watch a movie any day.

Sunday afternoon the girls and I spent a few hours with our good friends – they invited us over to make homemade pesto!  Cindy and I both have prolific basil plants and we had been talking about making some pesto with the leaves.

I had never made pesto, so Cindy offered to give us a lesson.  Our other good friends joined in on the fun and we had PESTO PALOOZA!

All of the kids got involved, from mincing the garlic to loading up the food processor, measuring the ingredients and spooning the finished pesto into the storage containers.

Many helpful hands make small work …

Our junior chefs –

The house smelled SO GOOD – one of Cindy’s sons came home as we were in the middle of a batch and he said the house smelled like spices. And it did! Such good spices…

I think we ended up with ten or eleven cups of pesto by the time we were finished.  Each family took a batch home to freeze and enjoy this fall – and I know whenever I take a container out of the fridge to use for cooking this winter I’ll remember the fun we had on that Sunday afternoon.  Good friends and good times.

We enjoyed our first batch last night for dinner. I grilled some chicken and served it with some sun-dried tomato pesto pasta. SO good.

Here is the recipe in case you want to make some of your own:

Basil Pesto

from Family Fun Magazine

Makes about 1 cup of pesto

2 c firmly packed basil leaves (fresh)
1/3 c walnuts of pine nuts
3 Tbs grated Parmesan cheese
2 small cloves garlic (or 1 large)
1/4 tsp each salt/pepper
1/2 c extra-virgin olive oil

1. In a food processor, combine all ingredients except the oil. Pulse until a thick paste forms.
2. With processor on, drizzle in oil in a slow stream until mixture is well combined. You may need to clean the sides of the processor to ensure all ingredients are mixed in.
3. Transfer to an airtight container. Cover with lid, refrigerate up to 4 days or freeze up to 2 months.