pesto

It's the end of the season but perennial herbs are still growing.  We made some pesto with the basil earlier in the season and today we're making more.  Basically, pesto can be whatever herb you want to blend up with some additions.  If you want to freeze it, I wouldn't add the Parmesan.  We use nutritional yeast rather than Parmesan for the frozen pesto.  Today, we're making pesto from the cilantro we bought from the store for some other recipe.  The cilantro in our garden went to coriander well before the tomatoes were ready, so that wasn't useful for salsa.  But, cilantro sold in stores is generally sold in a bunch that has way more than you'd use for just one thing.  Today we're also making mint pesto and oregano pesto.  I think we may even have some thyme pesto in the freezer from before.  I'm really looking forward to eating the nasturtium leaf pesto we made this summer.  You are limited only by your imagination.

It's best to have some sort of food processor or blender for this process. Generally people think pesto is basil, Parmesan, pine nuts and oil.  You can substitute any nut for pine nuts.  We use pecans because I prefer them to other nuts and because pine nuts at the local store are $43.99 a lb.  Instead of Parmesan, you can use nutritional yeast (found at a natural food store).  Again, we're not much into measuring, so we just grab a bunch of the herb, a tsp. or two of nutritional yeast or Parmesan, less nuts than herbs, and enough oil to make it smooth without being soupy. Jaimie also likes to add garlic.  Freeze in freezer bags or the canning jars used for freezing, or eat it right away.