Making pesto at home

 Despite it being a poor summer for our zucchini and parsley (the jury's out on the tomatoes - the crop looks good but is sitting in a green glower at the moment) we have a zonkingly large crop of basil - more than we can eat, so last night we had pasta, peas and baby potatoes with home made pesto.

Pine nuts are almost unobtainable at the moment - I would guess sanctions as a lot are harvested in Siberia - so we did a little detective work as to alternatives.

Most commercial jar pestos use cashews as a substitute, but we thought we'd try something different.

We found a recipe at the University of Utrecht that looked good and used sunflower seeds as a more environmentally friendly substitute.

The only problem was that we were out of sunflower seeds. We used almonds, dry roasted in a pan and fed through the spice grinder as a substitute. Almonds are grown locally but are wasteful of water, something to consider when one lives on the driest inhabited continent on the planet. Walnuts - also grown locally - or macadamia nuts  would have been a better choice, and certainly something to experiment with next time.

Anyway, we followed the bouncing ball and put it together, and it was really good. Certainly we'd do it again, and for making fresh pesto out of season Utrecht suggests carrot greens as a substitute - maybe we'll try that as well, with macadamia nuts ....