Pesto Party!

So in our effort to save a few bucks and eat healthier, Sibylle and I have decided to have Saturday morning cooking parties. Not only do we get to have fun hanging out and cooking in their fab kitchen, but we end up with loads of tasty food in our refrigerators and freezers!

This weekend we decided homemade pesto was on the menu. I love pesto, but buying it at the grocery store can be a little pricey. Especially if you want good quality. Fortunately for us Sibylle had a great pesto recipe from her sister. We bought the cheese at Costco (which is quickly becoming one of my favourite places) and the produce at a local fruit market. This was a much more economical then buying the ingredients at the grocery store. You'll need a LOT of basil for this (we needed about 10 cups). At the grocery store Basil was about $1 per stem. At the fruit market we got a MASSIVE bag for about $3. Well, we think it cost us $3. We bought 4 items and were only charged for 3. It's possible the cashier liked us. We left the store and started reenacting that Ikea commercial, running down the street laughing "start the car, start the car!!" Bottom line, grocery expensive, fruit market cheap!

When we got back to Sibylle's we quickly got to work prepping all of the ingredients. With everything ready to go, and a super powerful food processor, we were able to make quick work of this. I recommend doing this in several batches.

The trick is to taste every batch you make, adjusting quantities as needed. Then you mix all the batches together in a large mixing bowl, so you end up the a perfect mixture.

The results were DELICIOUS! We filled 15 jars with the most amazingly flavourful pesto I've ever tasted. As Sibs and I licked the mixing bowl clean we came up with a million different ways to use this gorgeous green sauce. The best part is knowing that I have a freezer full of this stuff!

Here's the recipe we used. This makes 1 batch:

3 cups of fresh basil

7 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup of pine nuts

1/2 cups of parmesan cheese

1 1/2 tsp of salt

1/2 tsp of pepper

1/2 cup of olive oil

1/3 cup of lemon juice

Add all the dry ingredients to the food processor and pulse a few times, then add the lemon juice and olive oil. Pulse until you have the desired consistency.