The recipe and ingredients here: Mixed Herb Pesto Sauce

Before starting this I thought making pesto from scratch was going to be super time intense because of all the chopping involved (even with using a blender for the final step) but it was actually pretty quick after all.

All the spices were from the fresh, organic section of the produce department. They were far cheaper than I expected and there are quite a few left overs so I suppose I’ll have pesto for a while…

I didn’t think the instructions needed much explaining but just in case here they are:

1. I started with getting all the ingredients measured and set out (it seems to make cleanup easier if I do this all at once.
2. The store only had whole pine nuts, so whatever I chopped them and it didn’t take long at all.
3. Basil. Super easy just a few quick cuts since I wanted to leave these bits slightly larger
4. Oregano. I pulled the stem between my thumb and index finger to quickly separare the leaves from the stem. Chopping was a bit tricky since the leaves are small but I just gently squished them together to get a good bunch then it was much easier. 
5. I used baby arugula so it was more tender than regular arugula and didn’t even bother cutting it. Just used my hands to break down into smaller pieces
6. Chives – different from Green Onion; they look nearly identical but are smaller. These were diced as small as possible. 
7. Parmesan. Ok, so I may have cheated and bought pre-shredded parmesan, but it still tasted good. 
8. I may have forgotten to get a picture of it in the blender. It was a bit tricky to get the herbs to catch the spinning part at the bottom but once it did it didn’t take long to get mixed. Don’t let it run too long otherwise it may heat up enough to warm the herbs to the point that they brown a bit. I left it pretty loose and let the still-warm pasta do the warming up.

That’s it. Topped with some left over, whole basil leaves and served warm 🙂