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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Komm zu mir



I know I know I know. Where have I been? Well the truth is - I've been out of town. September started our traveling and now we have a trip every couple of weeks or so. We got back in last night and it's been almost a full week since I've cooked last. I mean, sure, I could have cooked last night - but there was this restaurant I've been dying to try and it's on the way back from the airport....so we stopped there instead. And I'm already looking forward to bringing friends back to the place - always a good sign.

Of course the beauty of my profession is that there's no such thing as a vacation, which means I bring piles of work with me and still have mountains to do when I get home. So I got home especially late from work tonight and my plan of creating a vegetarian meatloaf was dashed to bits. Stay tuned for that tomorrow since it's in the oven right now so Thatboy can actually eat dinner tomorrow at a normal person's hour. Instead I came home and decided we'd have to do pasta since neither of us had eaten and it was too late for anything else.

I decided that at least I could make a homemade sauce while the pasta cooked, and since we'd been doing a lot of marinara lately I thought I'd throw together some pesto. Normally I use parsley in my pesto - but since I wasn't home last week to go shopping, and I wasn't expecting to make pesto, we had no parsley. We did however have spinach - which works just as well.

I like to think of myself as a good neighbor, which means I don't like using my loud appliances late at night. So instead of using my food processor, I just mixed the ingredients together. It creates a very chunky pesto, but it's still garlicy and delicious. Just remember to take something if you're a heartburn sufferer.


Spinach Pesto
  • 1/2 cup spinach, finely chopped
  • 1 Tbsp basil, finely chopped
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • dash of pepper
  • 4 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesean
  • 1 Tbsp boiling pasta water
  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • 1/4 cup pinenuts, finely chopped
  1. Combine all ingredients in small bowl and stir with a fork until combined.
Serves 3.
Each serving has:
Calories 353.6
Total Fat 35.3 g
Saturated Fat 8.8 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 6.8 g
Monounsaturated Fat 18.0 g
Cholesterol 23.5 mg
Sodium 703.3 mg
Potassium 134.8 mg
Total Carbohydrate 3.7 g
Dietary Fiber 0.6 g
Sugars 0.5 g
Protein 8.9 g


15 comments:

  1. I've missed you!

    Mr. Monkey would looove this dish. He is a pesto AND garlic monster!

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  2. I love pesto but I get sick of a lot of basil. This spinach version looks FABULOUS!

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  3. This spinach pasta looks good. I like chunky.

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  4. I think a chunky pesto is good sometimes...it's "rustic pesto"!

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  5. YUM! I've never tried anything other than traditional food processor basil pesto but now I really want to make this!

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  6. Oh my gosh, I have no words to describe how good that looks. Definitely will be attempted . . . sometime soon. :)

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  7. I have seen spinach pesto lately and can't wait to give it a try.

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  8. Looks nice and healthy. I pack everything with garlic too.

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  9. This looks really, really good. Really.

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  10. Spinach pesto - what a genius idea!!!

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  11. Glad to see you back! You're such a considerate neighbor. No noise can get in the way of me & some pesto ;)

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  12. Yay you're back and your yummy recipes too!

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  13. Just used some of my frozen pesto earlier this week. Now I'm craving more. I really should try the spinach version.

    Don't you love professions that require you to work while on vacation? Do we get to see vacation photos?

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  14. This sounds and looks fabulous. Anything with garlic has me SOLD, but this one is on the list to be made.

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