Inspiration: Pesto

You would think with all of the home grown basil I have at home, that I would have made a pesto by now.

Truth is, I'm on the fence quite a bit with pesto.  I like it, but I don't.  Maybe I have just had some bad pesto before?  I'm not quite sure.  I've had really good pesto twice before, once right before I went on maternity leave and my boss bought some yummy chicken sandwiches to my send off party; and the other was a few months ago at a friend's house.  She had asked what we liked to eat and I said we were open, but that I don't do seafood.  We ended up having some pesto pasta mixed with chicken and all kinds of vegetables and it was really good.

Since that dinner party, I have been craving some pesto.  I looked up recipes, but I didn't have the gumption to make my own.  It's silly really.

So, I was at Trader Joes the other day and a jar of pesto caught my eye.  I brought it home and the rest is history.  Magical, yummy history.  I started by remaking the dish my friend had made for me a few months before:

Pasta, chicken, broccoli, and roasted red peppers tossed with a little bit of butter and pesto, topped with basil and parmesan.  Totally yummy.  Served with garlic knot rolls, as seen on Pinterest:

Biscuits rolled out, formed into knots, partially bake, take out, top with butter, parmesan, garlic and oregano.  Throw back into the oven and wait until fully cooked and browned on top.  Also very yummy.

This meal didn't use up my whole jar of pesto, so a few days later when we wanted some pizza, we thought to use it in addition to our tomato sauce.  We bought a ready crust, added tomato sauce (with garlic powder and oregano), pesto, topped with mozarella cheese and chicken.  We cooked it and topped with fresh basil.  Of course, having a cute helper makes the cooking process wonderful!

 

 

Here's the end result:

This was totally yummy and inspired another day (a week or so later, we don't eat pizza every day!) of mini pizza making, this time using biscuits:

 

I know it doesn't look like it, but there's a layer of pesto under that cheese and peppers!  This was a quick and yummy luch too.  Took all of 15 minutes, including baking time, but not including the time it took the oven to preheat. :)

On tonight's menu: something with chicken....stay tuned...

Soup Weather

It's been raining all day. 

It's dark, gloomy, and on the cool side.

It's a perfect day for some soup.

The hubby wanted me to make chicken tortilla soup, but I didn't have a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes, cream, or avocados.  To make it, I would have had to change out of pajamas and face the rain.  I opted to talk him into plain chicken soup instead.

To start, I boiled 4 chicken breasts (all I had but bone in chicken would be wonderful here), in a large pot, seasoned with salt and garlic powder for 30 minutes.

I'm a big fan of clean broth so once the chicken was done, I transferred the breasts into a bowl for shredding (covered with broth so the chicken wouldn't harden) and I then strained the remaining broth into a smaller pot.

I brought the broth back up to a boil and then I added: potatoes (peeled and diced), carrots (peeled and diced), celery (diced), a chunk of onion (for flavor and was removed after the soup was done) and a cube of cilantro.  I made sure to season (salt and pepper) the potatoes and carrots before adding them to the broth.  I let everything come up to a boil for about 10 minutes.

I was originally going to shred the chicken, but decided that big, diced, chunks of chicken would be better and added it to the soup.  I let it continue to cook about 15 minutes until the vegetables were fork tender.

While the soup cooked, the hubby was nice enough to make a cup of red rice for me.  Recipe to follow in another post.

We topped it off with some Cholula for a kick.

It was a great choice for a not so great day.

Doomed from the get-go

Of course this would happen...

Like the minute you say you're going to diet and then eat nothing but crappy food.

I start a food blog, throw it out to the world and then I stop making food.  I'm not even eating food worth talking about!

So, since I haven't made any food...we'll talk about my hubby's birthday celebration.

We had dinner at Big Mama's and Papa's Pizza, which is always delicious.

We ended the night with a chocolate mousse cake from Vons, which proved to be really tasty.

 

 

 

Of course, the hubby couldn't blow out the candles himself, so glad he had two helpers.

 

 

Chicken has been taken out for dinner, so something will definitely be made tonight.  Stand by!



Tonight's Culinary Feast

Tonight’s culinary feast is…Hamburger Helper.

 Only I would start a blog to highlight the food I make and eat, and then the next day make Hamburger Helper.  Probably not my best move, but at least I’m honest.

On a positive note, it’s probably better for my children than Mac N Cheese because of the added protein.

Yesterday I made a lemon-basil-cream pasta with chicken and broccoli.  That was delicious.  To make up for tonight, I’ll talk about yesterday’s food instead.

 I seasoned two chicken breasts with salt and pepper and then marinated them in olive oil, lemon juice and basil for about an hour.  Then I baked the chicken at 350 for 45 minutes.

 As I boiled the pasta (I used penne), I made the sauce.  Combine 2 tbs butter (real butter), 2 tbs olive oil, some cream (I would say about ¼ cup?), lemon juice (I used the juice of 1 whole lemon), 1 clove of garlic (minced), basil (I used about 8 leaves, chopped using a chiffonade technique), salt and pepper.  That’s it.  Oh, I also added just a ladle full of pasta water (which was seasoned with salt prior to dropping the pasta).

During the last minute and a half of the pasta boiling, I added my broccoli to the boiling water with this awesome ladle strainer thing.  It’s amazing.  I don’t know what it’s called and I don’t have a picture, but take my word for it, it’ AMAZING!

 

Once the pasta was done boiling, I drained it and added it to my sauce.  I cut the chicken and added it to the sauce and then added the broccoli.  And like that, it’s done.  Minus the cooking time for the chicken, this whole dinner takes maybe 15 minutes.

I also served it on a platter, just to feel fancy.  I think it made the food taste better J

Home Grown Basil - A food blog

I had an epiphany.

I enjoy food.  I enjoy blogging.  I have another blog: http://inez83.blogspot.com/ which started with the intention of being a food blog and turned into my personal outlet.  A place to vent, to reflect, to escape.  Food became an afterthought to that blog.

So, I decided to start this blog for food purposes only.

Home Grown Basil?  It's a hashtag I use on Instagram.  I tagged food where I used our home grown basil, and thought it would make for a clever blog title.  Disclaimer: this blog is not dedicated to solely basil nor home grown food.

Hope you enjoy it.