Pesto-Chango

My mom offered us some basil last weekend to make homemade pesto. It's been well over 5 years since I've had enough basil at my disposal to make my own pesto, so I jumped at the chance. She filled an entire plastic grocery bag full of basil leaves and I was on my way.

I removed the leaves and washed the basil as soon as I got home. I took out the food processor and olive oil, started researching recipes and then called it a night.

The following morning my Mom stopped by; I told her I was going to start making the pesto and she wanted to help. I had wanted a defined recipe in order to find the 'perfect pesto' recipe. SUPER long story short, my mom is well-versed in making pesto. She is a pro. As a result, she doesn't use a recipe she just goes with the flow. Using the ingredient list below, she made pesto.

Basil Pesto
(Source: my mom)

Fresh basil
Garlic
Parmesan
Olive oil
Pine nuts
salt + pepper

She stuffed the food processor with basil, tossed in the garlic, added a little olive oil and let the processor run until the volume of the basil went down. She then added more basil, Parmesan chunks [she usually uses grated, but I didn't have that], salt + pepper and more olive oil and ran the processor some more.

At this point she had left to run errands, so I had to finish it off. I added the pine nuts and ran the processor a bit longer until the pesto reached my desired consistency.

{This will be a nice treat in the winter when basil season is long gone.}

I poured the pesto into five small plastic containers, labeled them and put three of the containers in the freezer. The other two I gave away: one to my mom and one to my brother. I haven't used any of mine yet and my mom and brother haven't mentioned anything about using theirs. I did take a small taste when I was done and it was good.