Vegan Dandelion Pesto

Okay Kids, what about those dandelions? They are beautiful...okay take a second look and really look at their beauty. Right you see it now! I was weeding the garden and looking at all of the dandelions that I was throwing away. I am sure that I can do something with all of this "waste". What about Pesto, ever heard about arugala pesto? Here is the low down... I was so surprised at how unbitter this pesto was, really it was so delicious that I just had to make it again... and again! So surprised!

Dandelion Pumpkin Seed Pesto

Makes Makes about 2 cups

Ingredients

• ¾ cup unsalted hulled (green) pumpkin seeds
• 4 garlic gloves
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 1 bunch dandelion greens (about 6 cups, loosely packed)
• 1 lemon juiced
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• ⅛ cup water
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Black pepper, to tasted

Directions

Place pumpkin seeds in a large skillet and roast over medium heat. Stir consistently until golden brown and you can hear they pop a little. Remove from the pan and allow to cool.
Pulse the garlic and pumpkin seeds together in the bowl of a food processor until very finely chopped.
Add nutritional yeast, dandelion greens, and lemon juice and process continuously until combined. Stop the processor every now and again to scrape down the sides of the bowl. The pesto will be very thick and difficult to process after awhile — that's ok.
With the blade running, slowly pour in the olive oil and process. Add the water a little bit at a time until the pesto is smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Here is a tip for you all, when using your Cuisinart, the most difficult thing about the Cuisinart is having to clean that silly lid. So a way I fix that is to wrap the lid is plastic wrap. Then when I am done I just unwrap the lid and viola!

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My Garden at Rest

So as you can imagine, since it is Fall, the leaves are falling. Obvious statement, right. Well, what most of us don't realize is that the very leaves that fall from our trees are packed full of nutrients for our yards. Just look at the forests in the US. The soil under that canape of trees is some of the richest soil anywhere. Why, because of all the organic matter that is produced and not removed. I'm not saying that we should never rake our leaves or clean them out of the road. If we did that, we would have a lot of upset neighbors. What I am saying is that why not use them to dress our gardens. I did this last year with some success. The problem I ran into was that I did not shred my leaves fine enough, so they didn't break down nearly as fast as I wanted. Last year, I used my leaf blower (I don't know why they call them this since I was not blowing but sucking the leafs), and it didn't shred the leafs well enough. This year I mowed them...twice! And they got really fine. So I am expecting them to break down much faster. A couple of days ago, my next-door-neighbor wanted to be really nice and mow up all of our leaves. He DIDN'T get far. I ran outside and asked him not to mow them, so that I could...I wanted to keep them... As you can imagine, he just gave me this funny look, and said "okay". So here we are. I want to expand my veggie garden, so I will be doing something similar to Lasagna Gardening, developed by Patricia Lanza. We will see how I do. In the garden now is a lone Arugula plant and some Broccoli plants. so my garden is not at complete rest!

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