Presto! Pesto!

I recently came into possession of a garden mess of weeds that once was a garden.  Very few things in this overgrowth are identifiable.  There are a few green tomatoes, yearning for the sun.  Some sad yellow cucumbers buried beneath the overgrowth.  But the basil* is standing tall and proud.  A veritable taunt to my basil-allergic husband.  Clearly this was a call to pesto.  I grabbed the baby and harvested about a cup of basil* leaves which was just enough for a half-recipe of my mom's pesto.  Of course, since I'm eating alone, a half recipe should be just fine.

*at least I hope it's basil.  Otherwise I just made a delicious and hopefully not poisonous weed pesto.

BASIL PESTO

Let's pretend you have enough basil for the full recipe, shall we?

INGREDIENTS:

2 C basil leaves

1/2 C olive oil

2 T walnuts 

2 cloves garlic

1 t salt

1/2 C freshly grated Parmesan

3 T softened butter

DIRECTIONS:

Put the basil, olive oil, walnuts, garlic and salt into your food processor.  Blend until it looks like pesto. Pour into a bowl and add the parm and the butter.  Stir.  Now you have pesto!  It will keep in the fridge for a week or so, but if you want to freeze it, you can do that before adding the cheese (no idea why it's BEFORE the cheese.  You'll have to ask my mom).