Pesto on Everything

On today's issue of "homemade everything," one of my favorite ways to eat leafy greens and enjoy them. I'm not very good at eating greens unless I hide them, so pesto is a great way to incorporate a lot of fresh, raw greens into my day. It's also very convenient, as I'll make a large batch on Sunday and have it to include with my meals for the rest of the week.

Store bought pesto typically has questionable ingredients in it like canola or soybean oil, natural flavors, sugar, yeast extract (a form of msg), and sulfites. I'd rather eat real food, and none of that qualifies for me.

If you google "homemade pesto," you'll find many recipes that call for pine nuts and basil. Delicious, delicious, delicious. But I'm frugal and pine nuts are not in my budget. Basil is hard to come by at certain times of the year. And why leave it at just one herb anyway?

Pesto can be made out of so much. For me, it's typically walnuts, a variety of greens that are mostly fresh herbs, a small amount of fresh garlic, fresh lemon juice, a swirl of olive oil, and salt and pepper.

I love using fresh herbs in all of my cooking; they taste delicious and are incredibly beneficial to your health. Parsley and cilantro both have amazing health benefits- they are full of essential vitamins and cilantro is even chelating- it effectively removes heavy metals from your system (something most of us have an unfortunate overload of.) I've lucked out that my favorite grocery store, Sprouts, has these herbs in generously sized portions for only $1.00 each. I'd rarely cooked with fresh herbs before discovering this, because spending money on tiny little packages has never made sense to me, and growing my own has been out of the question due to my black thumb. These days, a trip to Sprouts involves buying at least a pound of herbs that Jer, Harrison, and I eat throughout the week- in pesto, smoothies, salads, homemade salsa, etc.

Here's my method-

Ingredients
-a handful of walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pinenuts, sunflower seeds, or etc
-2-3 small cloves of garlic
-2 parts parsley (typically weighing about 1/2 pound), the ends of the stems cut off
-1 part cilantro, stems cut off
-1 part spinach/kale/chard
-sometimes 1 part basil
-juice of 1 lemon
-olive oil
-salt and pepper to taste

Put the walnuts (or etc) in a food processor and pulse a few times to break them down. Roughly chop the garlic and add to the food processor, run it until everything is combined and crumbly. Add the greens a handful at a time, incorporating the lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste, and olive oil to get the consistency you want. Easy and done.

Mix it up! Find the combo of greens that suits you best. Use cashews or nutritional yeast to give it a hint of cheesy flavor, or throw in some shredded Parmesan cheese. Add sweet or spicy peppers, dried tomatoes, or other seasonings to taste.

Serve over pasta, or mix it in tomato sauce first, eat on crackers or bread, mix into scrambled eggs, put it on pizza, toss it with veggies or garbanzo beans, use it as a sandwich spread, or my favorite: spread it on a savory chickpea flour pancake, warm off the skillet, and top with halved cherry tomatoes or sundried tomatoes and/or sharp cheddar cheese.