THE OL' PESTO CHANGE-O.

Pesto and I have a long and semi-complicated relationship.  I first attempted to make pesto during my senior year of college.  I had given up meat for Lent (a harbinger of things to come?) and a friend and I decided to have a meatless dinner.  I offered to make pesto, and, long story short, it turns out that fresh basil and dried basil aren't the same thing and you can't just straight substitute one for the other in a pesto recipe.  I can't remember what happened to dinner that night; I think my lovely friend gamely tried to eat some, whereas I took one bite, almost threw up, and maybe ordered pizza.

Fast forward some odd number of years, after I had moved to DC and inherited the food processor that my mother took when she left her job (or got as a wedding present – the story varies).  Enough time had passed since the dreaded Pesto Tragedy of 2004 that I felt confident in giving it another go.  Long story short (too late), fresh basil is tasty and my love affair with pesto was born.

Even though my love for pesto has waned a bit over the years, we are still on good terms.  In fact, there is almost always pesto in the freezer, as it is my and The Husband's* go-to dinner option when we are feeling lazy and uninspired and can't be arsed to cook but still want to act like grownups and have something more than cereal for dinner.  However, we sometimes resort to pesto pasta more often that we'd maybe like to admit, which leads to feelings of resentment, which leads to me feeling pretty apathetic towards making pesto, AGAIN, even though I bought the basil and we clearly won't use it in anything else.

That's the problem with pesto and I; pesto often becomes an afterthought.  It's what I make when I have leftover basil (and there is ALWAYS leftover basil).  I never seem to make it because I want to; I make it because basil starts to go bad the second you get it home and I'm tired of wasting food, so I begrudgingly whip some up and then throw it in the freezer and forget about it.

However, tonight I actually wanted to make pesto, if only to replace the unpleasantness that was the lemon basil pesto from a month or two ago (lemon basil has its place, but it's not in pesto).  One of the stalls at the farmers' market yesterday had basil and arugula; it was bag-your-own, so if you could cram it into a bag, it was yours for $3.  After much furtive glancing around the market to ensure that no one was watching as I stuffed already overflowing bags with more and more leaves, I sauntered off with a tidy sum of greens and a hankerin' for some pesto.

I ended up with two types: your standard basil and pine nut (extra garlic, natch) and an experimental version of arugula pesto, this time using toasted pepitas, a bit of spinach (to cut the spiciness of the arugula) and basil oil.  I had some of the arugula pesto on whole wheat fettuccine (with chopped tomatoes and Parmesan) for dinner, and I was terribly pleased with myself.  The rest has been dolloped out into an ice cube tray and popped into the freezer; once it hardens, the individual cubes of pesto are transferred to freezer bags, and voila!  We have single-serving portions for the future.  MAGIC.

(I had taken some photos of the pesto to illustrate the fascinating color differential between the basil and arugula versions, but the basil pesto looked thoroughly unappetizing; I tried to adjust the color, but fixing the basil meant that the arugula looked radioactive.  So, instead, I offer you this photo of our cat, Pannekuchen.  He is lounging on our copy of "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," so this photo is relevant to my post and I'm only partially cheating.)

Let's be honest: he is a cat, and this is the internet.  This will always be relevant.

Next up, a long and rambling story about mouse books and the resulting obsession with scones.

*In Wyomingese: The Husband and I's.