Best Bites Pesto Pasta

My mother and I shared a birthday the other day.  One of the gifts was a joint gift to both of us- a cookbook.  Not just any cookbook though, it was the cookbook from one of the most popular cooking blogs on the internet.  Ok, so I have no numbers to back that up, but its pretty popular and they have great food and fun ideas.

Since today is Saturday, I spent my morning looking for recipes.  Most of the time was spent looking at a Romano's Macaroni Grill online cookbook and the recipe section of Olive Garden's website (yes, both places publish their recipes!), but there wasn't anything there that sounded appetizing.  Cookbooks haven't really been a big part of my experience so far, so I didn't even think to pull one out until my mom handed me the one we got for our birthday.  Of the many recipes that I've decided to try, one stood out in particular.  It was bow-tie pasta with pesto sauce and roasted tomatoes, mushrooms and pine-nuts on top.  Though neither of my parents are big pesto fans, the meal was loved by all.  Since I'm pretty sure its copyrighted I won't put the recipe up, but strongly suggest trying it. 

Pine-nuts are used in two parts of the recipe.  You can buy pre-shelled and pre-toasted pine-nuts but they are expensive and basically don't exist in Delta.  Minus the time spent shelling pine-nuts the recipe would take about 20 minutes.  Shelling all those nuts by hand?  Several hours.

Also, pesto requires lots of fresh basil.  There are two stores in town- Quality and Jubilee.  I shop at Quality and bought out what was left of their supply of fresh basil-which amounted to about half as much as was needed.  Grudgingly, I headed to Jubilee to buy enough basil to make up the difference.  The basil down there was horrible!  The leaves were all wilted and turning a brown/grey color.  And the packages cost twice as much!  There is more in each package, I guess that's the reasoning for the extra cost.  But then you have to throw 3/4 of it away because its no good.  Guess I'll keep doing business where I have been.