Dairy-Free Basil Pesto

Hi everyone!

Cooking is in full swing these days. I've already given the team their first batch of cookies, made 3 loaves of zucchini bread, homemade granola as well as some yummy dinners. I'll be posting some baking recipes soon too but for now another dinner.

Since everything here is about 50% cheaper than the US, it helps me not feel guilty when I buy lots of ingredients that sometimes can be expensive. Thus I decided to buy some fresh herb plants. Basil, thyme, and rosemary. Honestly they are the less expensive way to buy fresh herbs so I think everybody should have a fresh herb garden. Mine have been doing really well, particularly the basil. Making pesto was really the only way to remedy this problem. And I love pesto. But the problem with typical pesto was the parmesean. So I did some internet searching and found a dairy free pesto recipe. I found a great recipe but was equally excited about the website it was on: www.adventuresofaglutenfreemom.com. This mom cooks all kinds of things without common allergens. Her son is gluten and dairy free so that's pretty helpful for me :) I'm trying the dairy free ranch dressing today! Anyway, here is the pesto recipe. I tweeked it just a bit based on what I have...

Dairy-Free Basil Pesto

2 cups Fresh Basil Leaves, packed

1/3 cup Walnuts

3 Garlic Cloves, minced

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1-1/2 tsp fresh squeezed Lemon Juice

3/4 tsp Sea Salt

1. In a food processor or blender, combine the basil leaves with the walnuts, lemon juice and sea salt. Pulse a few times until mixture is reduced in volume and the mixture is well incorporated.
2. Add the garlic and pulse a few times more.
3. Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream while the blender or food processor is running, stop to scrap down the sides with a spatula.
4. Taste.  Add more lemon juice and/or salt if needed. Mine needed more salt.
5. Add to any style of Gluten Free pasta (here I found the Sam Mills brand), toss, and top with chicken!

Because cheese might be my favorite food, I added some parmesean to mine :) This was delicious so go buy a basil plant, haha.

Maura

All you basketball fans, don't worry we'll have lots of things to post about that when the season starts. Only 2 days till the first exhibition game! We have the schedule finally so I'll post that too.