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...