Day 13, part 1 - Pesto

Cookbook - Jamie's Kitchen

It's my birthday today!

Today we made pesto to go with tortellini (and we made quinoa pasta shells).

I love pesto.

We've never actually made it from scratch before. We've always bought it from a store. We were kind of stuck on what to make because I wanted tortellini for my birthday dinner so we decided to do pesto which I thought was a great idea.

I love pesto on tortellini, on panini. Really on whatever you put it on.

This is the kind of confusing part of the night. It was confusing because we had two things to make. We decided to make a lemon cake for my birthday cake, and the pesto.

So my oldest brother, Alex, decided to make the pesto since he likes pesto on grilled sandwiches.

First he chopped the basil

Then he added the pine nuts

What he did was he got several handfuls of basil from our garden--sort of a garden. Not really. It's just a basil plant. You get one clove of garlic, pine nuts (which were $9, and we didn't use them all. We bought too much), olive oil, and parmesan cheese. He used the food processor (or you can chop it if you choose, but he used the food processor because it was easier and my mom told him to).

Alex and Claire--that's his girlfriend-- both thought the store bought pesto

was more creamy, but the homemade was more flavorful.

You puree all the stuff together. Ours turned out kind of chunky and we didn't have time to do it again, so it was thicker than the store bought one, and less creamy. BUT we read the ingredients on the store bought one and they used canola oil and more cheese and a bunch of other stuff.

So what we made was, I think, way better than the store bought one, and it was healthier.

2 THUMBS UP

Wish my dad was here (he's in BOSTON at a CONFERENCE.

On my birthday.

But hi Pop!

And happy birthday to me!!!