Week 2 included: spinach, spring greens, red leaf lettuce, green onions (scallions) and rhubarb

The word of the week is PESTO!

Until somewhere in the vicinity of a year ago, if you said “pesto” to me, that meant that lovely blend of basil, pine nuts, garlic, salt and olive oil that is the classic pesto.

But when pine nuts started costing the same as gold…I said “Whoa!” Apparently fires in AZ/NM destroyed a lot of pinion pines and then supply-demand and suddenly pine nuts were VERY spendy!

Just as suddenly, many were making pesto with walnuts. Me, too. And then one week when I had Kale that needed to be used and just a little basil – I made a “kale” pesto. Further looking about the world wide web turned up recipes for “Swiss Chard pesto”. It seemed that anything green could be subbed for the basil. And walnuts appeared to be the defacto substitution for the high priced pinenuts. Huh.

So….as my own personal stock of “spring greens” threatened to overtake this past week…I searched for “spring green pesto”. Yep, others had made a pesto with spring greens. A search for ways to use the beautiful bounty of green onions/scallions I had, turned up a recipe for scallion pesto which had NO green in it at all AND noted that sunflower seeds could be subbed for pinenuts. So I searched on “pesto” which means “pounded”. Still…all of these pesto variations…an Americanization of the real thing??? I don’t know.

What I do know is that when I combined spring greens, scallions, cilantro, garlic, olive oil, sea salt AND sunflower seeds in my food processor and blizted the lot – the result was wonderful :) !

Spring Green, scallion, sunflower seed “pesto”.

Impossible to see, but this is a portebello mushroom cap used as a “pizza crust”, my pesto as the sauce, cherry tomatoes from the local hydroponic farm, kalamata olives and mozzeralla cheese.

Pesto grilled cheese: corn tortilla slathered with pesto, then cheddar and grilled…side of those cherry tomatoes.

Pesto rice: stir some pesto into brown rice, top with a bit of goat cheese and you have pesto-goat cheese rice! A perfect side to pan roasted Copper River Red salmon and roasted beets. (The Copper River Red salmon [sockeye] is just now “in season”)

I used the red leaf lettuce as I did last week in sandwiches and my red leaf/walnut/roasted beet/goat cheese salad with homemade orange vinagrette. And the spinach in a carmelized onion/mushroom/spinach combo for quesadilla and breakfast scrambles.

I included spinach in my sweet potato “hash browns” over homemade refried beans …that served as the base for a no hollandaise eggs benedict.

Cooking from the garden: week 2

***the rhubarb??? I froze it…for combining with mine in a rhubarb jam.