Homemade Pesto Sauce

Perhaps its watching too many episodes of MasterChef; but, I felt inspired this past weekend to start cooking the majority of my meals, from scratch no less. Usually, my lunch meals consist of microwave dinners with less than 20% sodium (it's tough, but there are a few out there). My suppers are grilled meat and cheese sandwiches with a piece of fruit. Yet, last weekend, I checked out a couple of vegetarian cookbooks and went grocery shopping for vegetables and spices. My choice of vegetarian is simply because meat completely confuses me. I'm afraid it's undercooked and then I overcompensate to toughness. And, really, how does one thaw out frozen meat? After thawing, how long is it good in the fridge?

Sunday, I began by cooking something I've become proficient at - curry chicken. Thai Fresh sells a variety of curry spice mixes; and, they are delicious! The yellow and masaman curries are the mildest. The red curries are the next spiciest with the green curries barely edible due to the fire on one's lips. Coupled with brown Basmati rice, that fed me for three meals, which meant I needed to cook again tonight.

MasterChef Gordon Ramsey has been known to advise - "don't over complicate it". Usually, I try to use everything in my fridge at once and make some amazing concoction (which rarely succeeds). So, I started simple by cooking spaghetti noodles and steaming broccoli and carrots. My attempt at something new - homemade pesto sauce. The recipes looked deceptively simple - basil, garlic, parmesan, nuts, olive oil, all thrown into a blender. My kitchen contained basil, garlic and olive oil. I wasn't crazy about the nuts; but, would crumbled blue cheese suffice? I threw it all in the blender (sans nuts); and, waa-laa! "Have you tasted it?" Gordon Ramsey echoed in my head. A lick of the spatula was rather bland with a strong garlic aftertaste. Maybe some more greens? In went cilantro. The recipes also recommended adding salt to taste, another quick addition before hitting the mince button. The final pesto effect - too salty and then too garlicky.

Yet, I plopped steamed veggies on top of al dente spaghetti and drizzled the pesto sauce over the top. It looked pretty forlorn on the plate. Piling the rest of the plate with spinach and blueberries made everything look much more appetizing. My hopes were pretty low as I sampled the pasta. Yet, amazingly, it was delicious!