pistachio kale pesto

Why wait for basil?

Ingredients:
pistachios
kale
grated parmesan cheese
garlic
olive oil
lemon juice
water
salt
black pepper

Blend the pistachios in a food processor.  Lightly steam the kale.  Throw everything in the food processor for a whirl.  Adjust flavors as necessary.

arugula pesto

Yikes! We harvested a ton of arugula! We have been eating it on sandwiches and in salads. We have been giving it away to friends. Now we are condensing it into arugula pesto (arugula, walnuts, parmesan, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt) and freezing it for convenient use at a later date... I like to make life easy for future me. =)

pesto pizza & ramblings on local food legislation

Yum! For dinner tonight, we made pesto pizza on a cornmeal crust, topped with our first tomatoes of the season and cheese from Windsor Dairy.

Ingredients for large corn meal pizza crust:
2 1/2 c. all purpose flour
1 c. corn meal
1 T. sugar
1 t. dry active yeast
1/2 t. salt
2 T. olive oil
1 1/2 c. water
Onto the rambling! Windsor Dairy is great. They sell excellent artisan cheeses made from local, organic, grassfed cow's milk. The cheeses are just the gateway. The REALLY cool thing about Windsor Dairy is that they offer raw, unpasteurized grass-fed cow's milk to the masses. The way they do this is a little complicated but it is still effective. In Colorado, legislation allows you to consume raw milk from a cow that you own. Windsor Dairy offers a "cow share" program, where you buy a share of a cow and then pay a monthly boarding and milking fee on that cow and in return you can consume a weekly installment of raw milk.

This is significant to Eric and me because when we started getting into local food in Illinois, we were shocked to find no small-time dairy operations. I mean surely there must still be a few devoted small farmers, right? The thing is, there are laws. To sell milk, you need to own a lot of expensive equipment to process and pasteurize the milk to government standards. The standards are often prohibitively expensive for small processors: "Get big or get out." It's crazy though because you honestly don't need to pasteurize milk if its fresh, local, and from healthy, grass-fed cows. In fact it is way better for you than pasteurized milk trucked to you from CAFO cows. So why is it that the consumer doesn't have the right to choose?? In Illinois, we did end up finding a guy who would sell us raw, grass-fed cow's milk. It was totally under the table and we did it because we're that kind of people, but the point is that it shouldn't be so convoluted for the regular person to sell or buy quality food.

While I am on the subject, the government doesn't just inhibit small dairy, they also inhibit small, local food processors (people who make granola, jams, pastries, pickles, sauerkraut, etc). Small economies have unfair competition with grocery stores thanks to all of our subsidies to agribusiness. As if that weren't enough, you need a license and a commercial kitchen to sell food. You can't just sell your excess jars of jelly or custom cakes occasionally. To sell, you basically need to make a business commitment. I mean you can sell, but it's not so legal. Even if you try to do everything right, the city of Chicago may still swing by and destroy your granola. Unlike Illinois, Michigan recently took a really positive step in this arena by approving a cottage industry farm bill. People selling less than $15,000 a year in goods in Michigan no longer need a license nor do they need a commercial kitchen. They just have to label what is in their product and who/where it came from.

In conclusion, it is time for us all to change local food legislation in our states!

garlic scape pesto

Garlic scapes came in our Abbondanza farm share for the past two weeks. They are good in a stir fry, but I think pesto is my favorite way to eat them. I threw some spinach into this pesto, but that's totally optional. The spinach calms the bite of the garlic a little bit though not too much. If you're lucky enough to have basil, you can of course use that too. As I've mentioned before, I find that pesto is usually creamy enough without pine nuts or walnuts or parmesan but you're the boss. Now DO IT!

Ingredients:
2 handfuls of garlic scapes, chopped into 1-2 inch segments (around half a pound)
2 handfuls of spinach (optional)
1/2 c. olive oil
1/2 t. salt

Blend everything! Yum!

garlic mustard pesto

10:48 PM hi eric
10:49 PM got garlic mustard?? make pesto. i did; it was delicious!

I got this late-night chat from my mom. The next day, I looked up what garlic mustard was, and happened to see it growing behind a bench by the library. So, what did I do? Uprooted it and brought it home to make pesto! Julie is very familiar with this invasive species from her prairie restoration days and I had no clue about it. But who knew it made a great pesto? My mom, that's who.

Yields: 1 1/2 c. pesto

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. garlic mustard
6 cloves garlic
1 c. olive oil
1 t. salt

The 1 1/2 cups were from a single, large, garlic mustard plant. Just use the leaves, not the stems or flowers. Blend everything together in a food processor. With lots of olive oil, this makes a thin pesto. You can add pine nuts or walnuts if you like for a more traditional, creamier, pesto, but this was delicious as is. The taste of garlic mustard isn't very strong, so adding regular garlic is a good idea.

Here's an article (with photos) about how bad garlic mustard is as an invasive species and here's how you can make it good:

Garlic mustard pesto grilled cheese! We used "Young Tom" cheese (a little like munster) from Windsor Dairy and home-baked bread, with a bit of local wheat flour fresh from Farmer John's mill. I made a vegan version with hummus and it was excellent also.