Arugula Pesto

Hi Everyone!

Today was refrigerator clean out day!  You know the day when you realize that you just let a ton of vegetables go bad and to add to the waste of food, you have to clean the mess that it left in the refrigerator.  Yuck!  Well as I was cleaning out the fridge I saw a bag of arugula that I used for my BLT Pizza and realized if I don’t use it now, it will end up in the compost pile with the rest of the veggies.  So what do I do with a bag of arugula?  Then I remembered that Chef Dennis from A Culinary Journey with Chef Dennis said that during the Google Chat with Isabel and myself for Recipes from the Garden, he said that he liked to use arugula as pesto.  I thought, perfect idea!  So I took what he said and ran with it!

The pesto turned out beautiful! I love the bright green color that it has and the favor is magnificent. It’s got a nice peppery flavor from the arugula with a pinch of citrus from the lemon and of course you can’t have pesto without garlic. I have to say I love it! Most people tend to use pine nuts or another kind of nut when making pesto, but I skipped it in this recipe. I know nuts are healthy, but I try to cut back on the fat especially since I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

To make the pesto I put all of the ingredients in my Vita-mix blender and processed it until creamy smooth. You could also do this in a food processor, that is normally how I make my pesto. To save on calories, I also used water in the recipe. The water makes it liquefied and you get more dressing without diluting the flavor. Of course I added olive oil since I think it needs the flavor, but I only added two tablespoons in the recipe.

I served my pesto on some fresh tomatoes from my garden, sprinkled with a little Parmesan Cheese, but there are so many ways to use the pesto. Here is a list of just a few ideas I just came up, but the possibilities are endless.

• Drizzle on chicken or pork
• Smear on garlic bread and top with tomatoes
• Brush on roasted vegetables or vegetable kabobs
• Mix into pasta
• Drizzle onto sautéed vegetables
• Smear on a sandwich
• Dip pita chips in it
• Top on scrambled eggs
• Add to a salad

As much as I don’t like refrigerator clean out day, you just never know what creation you may come up with, with the ingredients you have leftover. I am looking so forward to drizzling my pesto on tonight’s dinner! Thinking veggie kabobs!  Yum!

Hope you have a fabulous day!

Toodles,

Jennifer