November 2, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I made Home-Made Pesto last night. We had it for dinner and our children agreed it was better than the Costco one. Creamier, my daughter said. It was simple and easy – and I am continually shocked as to why I had not known how to make this earlier? After dinner, there was enough to refill a clean Pesto Jar from the local organic market. I have to admit, the store cought pesto from the organic market was so vinegary that I had to force myself to finish it. It was shipped from Italy, and the main oil is actually sunflower oil not even olive oil. In our pesto we used walnuts instead of pinenuts, and usually walnuts are the quarter of the price of pinenuts. Ever price conscious – I’ll stick with walnuts.

Dr. Plastic Picker’s HOME-MADE PESTO SAUCE!!!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup of fresh basil , 1 cup of cilantro (most recipes call for the leaves, I was lazy and didn’t want food waste – so I used the whole thing. I am still alive after dinner and indeed thriving! You can use many different types of greens including kale, parsley, celery tops and carrot tops! Who knew???)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 cup walnuts (originally it calls for pinenuts, but they are more expensive and I had walnuts. On Instagram FamilyThemeDays said pecans work too!)
• 1 cup grated parmesan (some of my litter picking friends said you can omit this if you are worried about cholesterol)
• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt

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INSTRUCTIONS

1. Place whichever greens you chose (basil and cilantro for us), garlic, walnuts, parmesan cheese, and salt in a food processor (I used a hand blender which I think was a bit more difficult because I had to use the spatula to scrape)
2. Process until fully combine
3. Add olive oil
4. Blend until smooth
5. Eat or store in airtight (hopefully reused container) in the fridge.

I made home-made popcorn yesterday too on the stove, and seasoned it with coarse sea salt, and dried rosemary and sage. The spices are left over from our epic Thanksgiving Turkey last year. We are debating on whether to celebrate Thanksgiving anymore because of we support Native Voices now. But we appreciate the spices and need to use them up anyway. Plus, we are eating less meat and there is so much waste with Thanksgiving Turkeys.

Yesterday was so simple and a really nice dinner. Mr. Plastic Picker and I had gone to Home Depot to get more gardening supplies yesterday. I gave my mother-in-law two of the nice big planters that don’t have drain holes. They will do better in the front yard anyway. We bought more smaller planters made from recycled plastic. The succulents are doing well and I need to repot them in bigger containers. The radishes are actually growing. I may have too many!!! I started off with radishes because they are supposed to be easy. I think for a lot of people Home-Made Pesto is a good way to start as well, because it is so easy and you can really customize the recipe with what you have at home and to avert food waste. Just looked up another fun recipe and I guess radish greens are great to eat and can also be made into a pesto sauce!!! https://www.thewellessentials.com/blog/5-ingredient-homemade-radish-greens-pesto-recipe

And here is the result of my easy kitchen adventures yesterday. Home-made Pesto stored in a reused glass pesto jar! My pesto is definitely better than the vinegary one of that was in the original.

I was going to write a treatise about love of food and self, and how much happier I am about life. But that is it really. I feel really happy about my body and there are no more of the aches and pains from making myself run when I was injured. I jog or run and litter-pick depending on how my body feels. I try to get a good amount of sleep. Food has become so wonderful and delicious. When I make home-made food there tends not to be that overwhelming overabundance and we don’t overeat, and there is no food waste. The amount of pesto is actually just a small jar, but that is really all we will need for at least 2-3 more meals with some kind of pesto theme. The Costco sized pesto had additional plastic, plus it was just too much. That’s the thing about home-cooking at least for me now, usually the amount is just right for our family of four and 1-2 servings for whoever I’ll see at the office that day. So I have rediscovered a love of food and a love of self the last year. It’s simple but takes an entire shift in our thinking to eat less processed, more plants and food with less packaging. That has been the answer to our wellness. The Home-Made Pesto (even more than the Pediatric Vaccine Event on Saturday), Dr. Plastic Picker KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK!!! Yum yum – as one of my most favorite butterfly loving litter-picking Instagram friends said.