Homemade Pesto

fresh pesto in blender

I love herbs, I love growing them, buying them and especially cooking with and eating them. I have been growing herbs in the yard for years and making homemade pesto.  This year we have added more herbs to our yard and they have been growing like weeds.  The more you cut, the more the plant grows and gets bushier.  My daughter, Tabitha, who is my garden buddy informed me a couple of weeks ago that it was time to pick herbs and make pesto so I did. It smelled so good that I mixed a half of jar of Alfredo sauce that was in the refrigerator, made some pasta and had myself dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day.  I usually make 2 to 3 cups at a time and freeze it in small amounts (about 1 cup) in Ziploc bags.  I use it for pizza, spaghetti sauce, Alfredo sauce and sometimes dip.  It makes jar sauces taste more homemade for those nights you need a quick dinner idea.  Spaghetti is one of our go to quick suppers so I try to have a variety of homemade sauces in the freezer but sometimes it's a bought jar sauce kind of night. The girls and I also really love to make veggie pizzas so the pesto is great on that.  Pesto is so easy to do and very adaptable. I use whatever fresh herbs I have, basil, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sage, and parsley plus a few dried herbs.  I don't put nuts in mine, mostly because I never have pine nuts on hand.  If I have pretzels I have chopped those up in the pesto but not always. The hardest part is de-stemming all the herbs, which isn't really hard just the most time consuming. You can also add leafy lettuce, especially arugula.  I have made it with only dried herbs but it's not as good, you really need at least 1 kind of fresh herb.  I've made 2 batches so far this year and the way my herbs have been growing, more to come. So if you haven't made pesto before, get out the blender, olive oil and herbs and try it.

Pesto recipe
1/2 to 1 cup of water in bottom of blender
2 to 3 cups of fresh herbs off of stems, parsley, oregano, basil, sage, thyme, marjoram,
1/2 to 1 cup olive oil (add in stages as needed)
1 to 1 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
seasoned salt and pepper
dried herbs, especially parsley or any Italian blend

Puree in blender until smooth, should be slightly thick.  Season to taste. Freeze in small amounts in Ziploc bags.  Enjoy.

The joys of fresh lettuce

mixed lettuce from seeds growing in old wash tub in front yard

 We are growing our own lettuce again this year. We have several different kinds and growing in the front and back yard.  Most we grew from seeds that we started in milk jugs back in February but we did buy the leafy lettuce that we planted.  We have rocket, mixed leafy lettuce, arugula, bib lettuce and leafy lettuce, plus Swiss chard which is great in salads.  We tried spinach but didn't have much luck this year so we have been buying that and adding it to our mixture.  We've had salad several times this season and it's always so yummy. Now that the farmer's market it open we get all kinds of yummy veggies to add to our salad like carrots, radishes, tomatoes, plus fresh eggs hard boiled. I went out last night and picked this bowl of fresh lettuce for chef salad. I also made pasta salad and added our fresh basil.
Tabitha and I finished off the pasta salad for lunch today.  More pasta salad definitely in our future along with more chef salad.  I won't be buying iceberg

fresh picked for chef salad

hydroponic lettuce

lettuce anymore.  After eating fresh it's hard to even eat a salad at a restaurant that's mainly iceberg lettuce.  We bought this beautiful hydroponic lettuce from Murphy Farms this morning outside of Coop.  I snacked on it by itself it is so good.  More salad this week. I love this time of the year. We are having so much fun with our victory garden plus hanging out at the farmer's market and buying fresh produce. We have picked our first green bean and banana peppers. I added the green bean to the ones we bought at the farmer's market last week that I snapped and put in a baggie and froze. I cut the
banana peppers up today and they went into succotash chili which is on the stove cooking for later this week. I added yellow squash, turnip, garlic, zucchini, and onions all from the farmer's market plus corn I had cut up in the freezer and fresh tomatoes. Eating healthy at the Beckman house. Enjoy.

banana peppers from garden

leafy lettuce and rocket in back yard

1st green bean harvested