healthy laps

What is a girl to do with all of this garlic?

I mean, I do love garlic, but you can only use so much!

I comtemplated making a few different things, but decided to make three big batches of pesto since it can be easily frozen to use later on.

(I highly recommend that you make all of these recipes right now! :))

I started with my own version.

Simple Spring Garlicky Pesto

Ingredients:

• 1 bulk & stalk of spring garlic, chopped
• 2 cups fresh basil (mix of sweet and regular from my porch garden!)
• 1 cup kale (for more bulk)
• 1/2 cup toasted pistachios!
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• sea salt to taste

Throw everything into a food processor and blend away.

This pesto is awesome!  Surprisingly, the pistachios were a wonderful addition to this recipe!

Vegan Garlic Scrape Pesto  (from Oh She Glows)

I was a little ify about making this one, but really wanted to try it out.  I’m glad I did!  It is delicious…I even ended up doubling the recipe.  The garlic scrapes give it a hint of garlic, but it is not overpowering at all – yummy!

First, make your Vegan Parmesan Cheese!

• Throw 1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds, 2 tbsp nutritional yeast and 1/4 tsp of salt into a food processor and blend until crumbly!

Then, mix up your pesto!

• 3 garlic scrapes
• 1.5 cups vegan parmesan cheese (see above)
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 handful spinach (I used swiss chard – just used to make it green)

Throw it all into your food processor and blend.

(recipe makes about 1.5 cups)

The vegan parm cheese is surprisingly cheesey!

Lastly, our favorite red pesto from 101cookbooks.com.

Red Pesto  (from 101cookbooks.com)

• 12 sun-dried tomatoes (not in oil)
• 2 cloves garlic
• pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp fresh thyme (from my porch garden!)
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup toasted walnuts
• pinch salt

Put the following ingredients in a blender and blend until you love the consistency.  I like to leave this one a bit more ‘crumbly’ because it tastes great!

(recipe makes about 1.5 cups)

I ended up doubling all of these recipes and put 1/2 away in the freezer.

How do I freeze pesto?

Easy!

Spray a muffin tin with olive oil and put fresh pesto into a mini muffin pan (or ice cube trays) and freeze.  After they are frozen, they pop right out of the tin.  Put in a ziplock bag or tupperware and store in the freezer.

This way, you can just take out and defrost what you want, instead of having to defrost the entire jar of pesto at once.

I like to take a few cubes out and defrost them over low heat with a little extra olive oil to make sure it mixes up well.  Serve over pasta, rice, vegetables, in salads or anyway your heart desires!

Tip: Plan to make a few recipes together so that you only have to clean up once. 🙂

Filed under: Eating Laps, Recipes | Tagged: garlic, pesto, Recipes |