Today's meal was an adventure.
It started yesterday when I had my first day volunteering with a city of Toronto community stewardship program. I'm with the Spadina and Queens Quay wetlands team. It isn't really a wetland. It's just a little naturalized area right on the harbour. Animals and birds live there though, and it's a nice little spot. I might try going to some other sites also.
Anyways, it was mostly introduction this week, but we did pull some garlic mustard plants out. They're an invasive species that out-competes native plants and screws with the ecosystem. They are also edible. I took a bunch home, pulled off the young leaves, dumped the rest, and washed the plucked leaves by letting them soak for a few hours (changing the water twice).
Then I found a recipe for Zesty Tomato Pesto in 'Vegan with a Vengeance.' I picked it because it looked less fattening than most pesto recipes and I'm trying to drop some pudge.
So since the recipe I came up with was pretty different from the original 'Vegan with a Vengeance' recipe, here is the recipe for:
Super Fucking Garlicy Pesto
4 medium tomatoes (chopped)
1 bunch fresh spinach
1/2 cup green onions (chopped)
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp olive oil (I decreased this from the original 1/2 cup in order to decrease the numer of calories in the dish.)
4 cloves garlic (crushed or minced. I crushed them, which is one reason the dish was so increadibly garlicy.)
1/2 cup fresh garlic mustard leaves (This grows all over Ontario. It is a tallish, bendy plant with small white flowers. You can look it up on google. The young leaves can be plucked and used. Wash very well first.) or fresh basil leaves, if unavailable.
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp lemon juice
Blend all of the ingredients in a blender, then heat and serve over whole wheat pasta.
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