Presto Pesto (Mess - doh!)

We have basil. We have tons and tons of basil. We have purple basil and all these different fancy kinds of basil and it's like BASIL, BASIL, BASIL!

A few weeks ago, theGuy and I imagined how amazing and cute and incredibly domestic it would be if we made home-made pesto from the basil growing in our garden. Light would shine softly in the window, we would giggle and gaze into each others' eyes, and our home would be filled with the aroma of love. I found a recipe with great reviews online, and purchased the (expensive!) pine nuts and everything else that goes into it.

I was ready to go.

A week later: "Hey guy? I'm ready to make pesto!"

Two weeks later: "Hey.. guy? Pesto?"

Three weeks later: "We should make pesto."

Four weeks later: "Do you still want to make pesto?"

This week: I decided to rock the pesto, solo style.

I still had dreams! I would make the most amazing pesto the world has ever had. With garlic and parm and purple basil! Everyone would think to themselves "wow, Patti is so domesticated, and talented, pretty and funny. How does she ever have time to make HOME-MADE pesto? What a catch!"  I gathered all the ingredients and was all "Booyeah! I can do this on my own! Feminism! Er... girl power!! PESTO PRINCESS!" I figured it'd be the easiest recipe in the world (the instructions said 'toss everything in a blender and you're done' so I figured I was good to go). I could take photos as I went and then I'd be a domestic goddess and blogging genius. It was going to be awesome! I should start my own cooking show!

But things don't always turn out the way that you plan. And you know what? I'm going to share that with you, because that's how real I am. Oh yes. Kitchen foibles!

Simple Garlic & Basil Pesto

Ingredients:

3 cups chopped basil
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup of pine nuts
1/8 cup brazil nuts
2/3 cup of grated parm
4 cloves of chopped garlic
1/2 tsp chili powder

The Process (my process, that is)

So, you toss three cups of chopped basil into a blender. A new blender, even - a brand new Kitchen-Aid blender, even. I'd given away my trusty 70s blender - because I got married and got shower gifts that were nice:

Because putting 3 cups of basil in a blender takes skillz, yo!

 
Then, you add 1 tbsp of the olive oil to the blender, also:

I know, I know - you're like "wow, this recipe is really challenging!"

Then, turn on the blender until it turns into a paste:

The machine is on, people.

 Until it turns into a paste:

 Until it turns into a paste:

Okay. What the eff, yo! It's not turning into a paste! I shook it, turned it upside-down, tried every setting on the thing, and it just wasn't working! I added more oil, and it still wouldn't work. This was NOT an "easy-throw-into-the-blender" recipe, as it had falsely advertised.FALSE ADVERTISING! I was a failure! Not a feminist! Not domestic! Not anything genius. I couldn't make pesto - and it didn't even involve cooking.

But then! I had a bright idea!

I remembered that we had also received an immersion blended (which I'd never used or seen used in my entire life), and I was pretty sure that the "immersion" part meant it could be submerged. Is submerged and immersed the same thing? I don't know. But I put it together, in a way that seemed to make sense at the time (and I still have all my fingers), and dumped the basil into the bowl. But the basil was all stuck inside the blender and wouldn't all come out, so, in fact, I only had about 1.5 cups of basil to work with at this point.

I'm truly a culinary genius!

The immersion blender was working (thank you, Bodum!), so I added the garlic:

That's right. My spatula is a guitar. I'm coo like that.

 Then I added the pine nuts:

I continued to use the quantities the recipe listed. I'm nutty, and so is this pesto!

I added the beech nuts (which I chopped first, because I was afraid of the immersion blender):

Look how pro my photography is! Just call me Martha.

 I added the Parmesan cheese, and more oil:

One lonely apple. Must be grocery shopping time again!

And then! It was done! I MADE PESTO! I'd read about people freezing their pesto in ice cube trays, and what a brilliant idea that was. All I needed was a normal ice cube tray. So I grabbed my selection. I have many. Trays that make pumpkins, skeletons, guitars, stars, and even gems - but I'd THROWN OUT my plain ones (I actually probably recycled them, because I'm good like that). So that meant I didn't even have the proper ICE CUBE TRAYS to work with.

So I threw it in a ziplock:

Hello! Who's a drug dealer? Dad, please don't arrest me!

And this recipe of mine, the one that was such a nightmare, the one that took an hour and half to make - not to mention the plucking of basil from the garden and the spider encounters that came along with it, this recipe, it yielded:

FOUR. BAGS.

Four little bags of pesto. So I can now eat pesto (which will probably taste all effed up because most of the basil was still stuck inside the blender) four times before I'll want to die. Which means I will save it for special occasions and three years from now will throw it out because I won't be able to tell, through the freezer burn, what it was in the first place (this is how I roll!).

If this pesto were for sale, it would be one million dollars a bag.