Vegan Whole Wheat Noodles with Pistachio Lemon Pesto

Every year my gradeschool girlfriends and I get together for "Girl Camp", a multi day food/blab/dance/relax fest. When I came home I was craving some clean food after all of the rich foods we ate.

This pasta dish totaly fit the bill, and is just as tasty served cold, so leftovers are perfect! The pisctachio pesto would also be a great filling for phyllo dough and served as an appetizer.

1/2 cup unsalted pistachios, shells removed
1 shallot, peeled and chopped into 8ths
1 lemon (Meyer if you can find them), washed and cut into 8ths (peel on)
3 Tbsp E.V.O.O.
1/2 lb whole wheat spagetti (I bet Soba would be good too)
2 cups bitter / baby lettuce
1 cup cherry toms, washed and halved
S&P to taste

1.) In toaster oven, warm/toast pistachios until fragrant. Place in food processor bowl.
2.) Bring large pot of salted water to boil
3.) Add shallot to pistachios and pulse until chopped, add lemon and make paste. Transfer to serving bowl. Stir in 2 Tbsp olive oil.
4.) Cook pasta until al dente. Before draining, use glass measuring cup and collect 1/2 cup pasta water.
5.) Add pasta to serving bowl with pesto, toss, adding pasta water as needed to make sauce. Season with S&P.
6.) Toss with lettuce, top with tomatoes and serve.

Mini Cornbread Pizzas

I love to cook - I love to explore new (and slightly scary) recipes and to feel like a mad scientist, using what feels like every utencil and pan I own and spending hours by myself and my experiments.

Sometimes, though, I don't want to cook at all - I just want to eat - and yet I find I am so picky about quality and nutrition that I can't bring myself to get take out or fast food. So, I have a number of "cheater" or "week night" recipes that I can make quickly and yet still want in my mouth.

Cornbread pizzas are fun because the require (in my opinion, at least) that one abandons the typical "Italian" red sauce and come up with more sweet / savory flavor combos. I used to make my own cornbread dough, but then I found that my local heath food store carries a two pack of high quality, organic frozen doughs for less than $5 and I quickly abandoned the thought of making mine from scratch. (Also, theirs is much better...a more moist mouthfeel and better overall texture - it is a "win - win"!)

As there are two, and my husband doesn't always like my "unconventional" combinations, I make two different pizzas:

Cornbread Pizza with Bacon, Blue Cheese, Carmelized Onions, Apples and Fig Sauce
1 x mini cornbread pizza dough, still frozen (or your own from scratch)
1/2 x a white onion, sliced thin, lengthwise
2 x slices of bacon (Applewood if you can find it - thick sliced), cut into 1" pieces and browned (I just use my kitchen shears and cut)
2 x Tbsp fig jam - (the best I have found is from The Girl and The Fig
1 /2 x Granny Smith or other crisp, tart apple, thinly sliced
2 oz. crumbled (Blue Costello) blue cheese (or more or less to taste)
S & P


1.) Cook bacon until brown, remove from pan and drain on paper towel
2.) Drain all but 1 tsp of bacon grease (* you can use evoo, but saturated fats always make onions sweeter) and cook onions, stirring occasionally until golden brown (5-10 mins)
3.) Spread slices of apples in radial circle over sauce
4.) Cover with carmelized onions and place in a 325 degree oven for 5-7 mins, until the apples are soft enough to bite
5.) Remove from oven, add blue cheese and bacon, return to over and bake until blue cheese is warm and soft. (You can add these at the same time, so long as you don't mind more of a hard melted cheese.)
6.) Cool and eat. :)

Serves: 2
Cost per serving: $5.25

Cornbread Pizza with BBQ Chicken, Cheddar Cheese, Onions and Bacon
1 x chicken cutlet, baked in e.v.o.o. and coated with sauce (I always freeze a little when we gril some so I can skip this step)
2 x strips of bacon, cut into 1" pieces and browned
6 oz. shredded cheddar cheese (or jack)
1 x Tbsp BBQ sauce for pizza
1 x Tbsp BBQ sauce for chicken
1/2 x onion, thinly sliced
S & P

1.) Bake chicken cutlet in e.v.o.o. at 325. Let cool, shred and toss with BBQ sauce (you can chop if you like meat cubes.)
2.) Cook bacon until brown, remove and drain on paper towel
3.) Spread remaining BBQ sauce on dough
4.) Spread onions on sauce
5.) Sprinkle cheese over that
6.) Add shredded chicken
7.) Add bacon crumbles
8.) Bake. Cool. Eat.

Serves: 2
Cost per serving: $3.75 (cheaper than McDonalds)

I would love to hear more ideas .........

Happy Eating! Emily