Fresh food

I have always loved fresh food - and it shows on my body that sometimes I love it too much! It is so fun to pull together fresh veggies and go to town in the kitchen. Tonight was no exception. It was snowing outside, and a grey day, but we had home made pesto with sundried tomatoes, roasted red peppers and grilled chicken strips. I prepared it all.

This is the cilantro waiting to be whirled in the food processor:

I use cilantro instead of basil in my pesto during the winter because it is so much less expensive, and it is nicer/fresher and keeps longer.

Here are is my pepper roasting away - something I learned to do from Sammy, a man we knew in Truckee. It is so easy - I never imagined!

And I can't believe what a difference it makes in flavor to roast my garlic before I put it in! Yummy!

Load it in the food processor with some jarred sundried tomatoes (okay, those aren't so fresh, but it is hard to grow tomatoes in this cool climate with a short growing season, so I make the compromise), some nice walnuts that my dad sends me, and a bit of olive oil and we have a delicious pesto!

You may have noticed that there is no cheese in this pesto. I realize that. We started that years ago - more than a decade - when I was on a diet to control endometriosis that included cutting out all cow dairy (and wheat and red meat - boy was that a tough 18 months). It really tastes great without the cheese so we never went back to adding it in. As mentioned above, I tossed the pesto sauce with some pasta, grilled chicken breast and roasted red peppers. It was delicious. Also made a bit of home made garlic bread, and we had a feast! After two nights in a row where we didn't get to eat together as a family, this was a nice treat. And really so simple to make.

Sorry all the photos were a bit blurry. I'm just not the greatest indoor photographer, and the lighting was funky because my kitchen only gets defused light, and I didn't want to use the flash because then you wouldn't see the yummy colors. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. That's all for today!