Green Gold - Vegan Pesto

You don't need to use dairy to make a good pesto.

Although I'm starting to tolerate my dairy better (I will probably blog about my new strategy soon... but it started from THIS post), I still try to avoid dairy that I think is "unnecessary." After all, I'm training for a couple of marathons in the first part of this year (this one being the first), and I definitely want to try to eat right to help avoid the injuries I struggled with through MOST of last year.

One "unnecessary" place I often find dairy is pesto. Pesto sneaks into pasta salads and sandwiches, and since I'm not as meticulous about the contents of my food as I should be, I often wind up "cheezed" (no pun intended; a phrase my brother-in-law likes to use).

I was watching TV one day and saw this recipe that was thankfully also published on this website.

Note that I subbed a few ingredients: chives for green onions and almonds for pumpkin seeds. The results were still great, though!

Above: Toasting the almonds for flavor... I used a Magic Bullet (mentioned in passing a few times here) for this, though "The Ukrainian" recently got a food processor. That means... more food experiments to come!!

Above: Everything after the blending. Green is obviously my favorite color (have you noticed?), so I think this is beautiful! I had to stop myself from licking off the blade and cup!

Above: I had about half a cup of this stuff to save for next time!

Above: I put it in "The Ukrainian"'s sandwich. This was inspired by a sandwich I had during the holidays. My sandwich was similar but didn't have the swiss cheese.

Above: And for good measure, I served the sandwich was some romaine in homemade Japanese-inspired dressing consisting of toasted seasame, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce.