pesto

today as i was thinking about making myself some lunch... my mind kept going toward making something a little healthier since my fruit juice this morning... ive been telling myself for a while that i need to straighten up my eating habits but i suppose actually getting those thoughts out and sharing them with someone other than myself made them a little more convicting. so i headed over to food gawker to try to find something that peaked my interest when i stumbled upon... pesto. theres lots of pesto recipes there everything from sandwiches to pastas to pizzas soups and salads...

so i started perusing the pesto recipes (which are also of abundance there...) what did i find in common? .... pine nuts. turns out you can (according to various cooks from the internet) change up the basil for parsley... but they were all pretty serious about their pine nut ingredient. toasted or not it was in almost every recipe. so i headed to the store.... and came back.... and intended to try the recipe without pine nuts. because half of what each recipe called for.... was the same price as almost a whole chicken. so... i couldnt reason myself into buying them for a meal i was making for myself.

another disadvantage? the lack of a food processor. which i wasnt so worried about since im pretty sure i have memories of a friend making pesto with just a blender. well. my next mistake. the basil kept getting stuck in the bottom of the blender.... and was being very stubborn. i probably added more olive oil than necessary to try to get it moving... oops.

well i did a little research. and i added another reason to my list of why i want to visit italy/greece. the best pesto comes from a place called liguria in italy. because they have the best basil. i want to visit liguria. its also said that ligurians believe the best method to making pesto is the age old method of grinding it together with a mortar and pestal (but they dont vary away from the pine nuts....) so... since im pretty sure those are quite less expensive than food processors. im thinking my wrists are going to get used to the ligurians favorite way to make pesto...

to be continued...