Ah weekday dinners. Pre-COVID, they held a particular strain of stress when we were commuting to and from work and squeezing in all sort of errands. Now, it’s more about weighing the risks of braving a shopping trip versus paying the delivery charges to put together the necessary nightly meal.
It’s no mistake the late David Foster Wallace used the grocery store as his existential lynchpin to explain the vital importance of paying attention in his seminal speech, This is Water. Thinking about, shopping for, and preparing food is not a passive thought process, particularly when you are trying to save money.
Enter Carrot Top Pesto. These oft forgotten (free!) greens make for a quick and tasty meal. You can use a variety of nuts and any sort of hard cheese to achieve the desired effect. A few tips: if you want the pesto to turn out bright green, you need to wet and freeze your knife or your mixing blade. Second, it’s important to get a nice toast on your nuts so they can smooth out the slight bitterness of the greens. Third, whether you add your pesto to roasted vegetables, pasta, or meatballs, make sure these ingredients aren’t too hot or you will wilt and dull your pesto…and no one really likes the taste of piping hot pesto.
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Carrot Top Pesto
Feeds: 2-4 people
Prep: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
Carrot tops (from about 8-12 carrots)
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 C nuts (I used pine)
1/2 cup finely grated hard cheese (I used parmesan)
Salt (to taste)
EVOO (to coat)
Lemon Juice (just a healthy squeeze)
Directions:
1) Finely chop your greens and place in mixing bowl
2) Toast nuts until you can smell them and then chop and add to greens.
3) Mince garlic and add to greens.
4) Add cheese, salt, olive oil, and lemon and add to greens.
5) Stir all ingredients and serve immediately.
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*Prest-O Change-O is a 1939 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, and first released on March 25, 1939 by Warner Bros.[1] It is the second and final appearance of the manic white hare from Porky's Hare Hunt, and the character's only appearance in a color film; the next hare-based short film, Hare-um Scare-um, would introduce a larger gray hare more closely resembling the character it would become in later shorts, Bugs Bunny.