Favorite Summer Recipe!

Whew! It's been a wild few days for many reasons, but the main one: we made a weekend trip out to Kansas to attend Jennifer's cousin's wedding - leaving Friday night and arriving home Sunday night with most of the time spent driving to and from. The event provided some nice family time, which we enjoyed. Pictured below is Jennifer's Grandma Eileen, mom - Linda & sister - Lori.


We always pack lots of road food in our plug-in cooler for these trips. We find we can travel most trips like this and spend very little on food and enjoy quality vegetarian fare, which is MUCH easier to find in our cooler than along the interstates of the United States. One of our newly discovered favorite summer foods we took on our trip is from The Moosewood Restaurant: Cooking for Health cookbook. This recipe is so easy and so flavorful. Give it a try with all your homegrown basil! Yum!

Pepita & Sun-dried Tomato Pesto

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup shelled pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/3 cup olive oil or extra-virgin olive oil
2 packed cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup chopped fresh tomatoes
1/4 tsp salt
dash of black pepper

1. In a small sauce pan, bring to boil the sun-dried tomatoes covered with water and then set aside until softened, about 5 minutes. Drain and chop. (We didn't do this because our sun-dried tomatoes were really soft.)

2. In a food processor (or blender), whirl the pumpkin seeds, garlic, oil, basil, fresh tomatoes, salt, pepper, and softened sun-dried tomatoes until smooth.

Great as a dip or spread or topping or flavoring! Use your imagination!

Finally, for those of you interested in our last post's viburnum identification, a reader commented and let us know it's most likely Viburnum recognitum. Thanks George!