Arugula and Walnut Pesto

Sundays are pretty low-key around here. We go to church (Scott helped me in Sunday School today. That was pretty cute), we get fed lunch at his parents, stuffed with dessert at mine, and then we head to Freddie's for some grocery shopping. We return home late-afternoon, which leaves me more time than our usual week nights to prep dinner. This extra-long stretch means I can get super wild in the kitchen...which also means Sunday dinners result in adding another recipe to the books, or adding some more contents to our trash.

While we were wandering around Fred Meyer grabbing the usual suspects, I got to thinking of how I could use the arugula that was slowly dying in our fridge. I knew pasta was in the plan for dinner, so pesto came to mind. It didn't take me long to walk straight to the bulk department and fill up on some walnuts. Hi-ho, bulk department TOTALLY the way to go. 3/4 pound for six dollars? This equals out to many more walnuts happenings soon.

This turned out way better than I had expected. I used various other pesto recipes to form a base of how-to-do, including these two. While the peppery taste arugula holds was delish, it was really the salty parmesan that blew it out of this world. But that's me, who could have a hunk of parm in my lip the whole day and be totally content.

This played well with pasta, but I would definitely suggest warming it up in a sauce pan (while your noodles are boiling) and adding spoonfuls of boiling pasta water as necessary to get it all creamy and juiced up.

Arugula Walnut Pesto
Makes about 1 cup

3 cups loosely packed arugula
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 cloves garlic (preferably roasted)
1/4 cup heaping walnut halves
3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup olive oil
S&P to taste


1. In a food processor, get your arugula, lemon juice, garlic, walnuts, and cheese roughly grated and mixed up.

2. Stream in olive oil as the processor is running to get it all smooth and pureed.

3. Taste. Add salt and/or pepper. Taste again. Say "mmm."

4. Use as you wish! Leftovers will be on my sandwich tomorrow.

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