Spinach Pesto

I love this time of year.  The St. Paul Farmer's Market is starting to fill up with all matter of delicious things.  I visited them this morning specifically looking for Eichten's Cheese and the Otis Family Farm.  Neither was there today.  Yes, bummed I was!  They must just go on Saturdays this early in the season.  I'll have to hit up The Golden Fig for my bacon and eggs this week.

What Farmer's Market does have a lot of is spinach.  Lots and lots of spinach.  For $3 you can buy more spinach than Dave and I could eat if we ate it every day for a week!  But I bought it anyway.  I like it fresh, I like it sauteed and now I like it in pesto!

Here's a link to the recipe I followed.  I changed it up a little but this is the basic recipe.  LINK

Like with most pesto recipes this one called for pine nuts.  I didn't have quite the amount of pine nuts so I added walnuts to make up the difference.  I toasted them before adding them to the pesto.

In my trusty old food processor I put 2 cups of spinach, the toasted pine/walnuts, a garlic clove, a little lemon juice, salt and pepper and I processed it until it was combined.  Couldn't you just eat that with a fork?

While the food processor was running I added the olive oil.  I used a basil infused olive oil.  It is pesto after all!


Once that's processed I added the cheese and the pesto smelled amazing!

I boiled up a little homemade pasta and tossed it with the pesto.  It is so good I nearly licked the bowl!

While I was looking for a good pesto recipe I came across this Spinach Pest Grilled Cheese Sandwich from the Closet Cooking blog.  Now that looks really good!