Happy Wednesday everyone!

My kids absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE pesto pasta.  We often purchase ready made pesto pasta from Trader Joe’s.  Well, sometimes you forget to list certain items on your shopping list and you have to scramble to cook with whatever ingredients you have readily available.  Lately, both G & I have been very forgetful in terms of what to list on the shopping list (note to self: do not compile last minute shopping lists).  One of those items that was excluded from last week’s shopping list was the pesto sauce.

The twins have been asking for pesto pasta (and no, they hate red sauce pasta) for the past couple weeks.  The brown rice and anchovy pasta have been holding the fort down but they still want their pesto pasta!  To think on my feet, I decided to make my own pesto pasta thinking I had all the necessary ingredients like basil (from our garden), garlic, olive oil and walnuts.  Well, guess what.  We forgot to buy walnuts too LOL!  But…we have almonds!  So why not sub walnuts with almonds?  That’s a exactly what I did and it was tasty and the boys loved it.  Oh…it’s so much cheaper too!!!  Have you ever had to replace an ingredient and yet it turned out fine?

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh basil leaves
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup almonds
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Himalyan salt to taste

Directions:

Combine the basil, garlic, and almonds in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add the olive oil and process until fully incorporated and smooth. Season with salt.

I put the pesto to a glass tupperware for immediate and future use. You can also freeze it for up to 3 months if you don’t eat pesto sauce frequently.

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