A Vegan Pesto recipe - and it taste good, CRAZY!

I LOVE pesto, there is something about pesto that drives me crazy and I eat and eat and eat.  So my challenge was to make a pesto recipe without the parmesan. I surprised myself and did.  Not only was I able to create a vegan pesto recipe, my kids ate it without adding spaghetti sauce - which they never did with the parmesan version.  The trick seemed to be the nuts making a paste, with a similar texture as parmesan but still retaining a great flavor.  It helped that we had butternut squash ravioli.  I hope you find it just as good as we did.  This recipe is a keeper in our house.

Ingredients:
1 - 1.5 lbs of butternut squash ravioli (we've also used mini potato and onion pierogi)
1.5 cups spinach
1/2 cup basil
1/4 cup olive oil
8 oz pine nuts (or walnuts)
2 cloves garlic


Directions:
1.  Cook butternut squash ravioli per package directions.
2.  Chop garlic in smaller pieces, it doesn't need to be minced, just it blends better.
3.  Toast pine nuts (walnuts).
4.  In a food processor (or blender), put spinach, basil, olive oil, nuts and garlic in it. Blend.  It will be thicker then jarred spaghetti sauce
5. Put squash and ravioli together and you have a delish meal!

Insane Tangy Vegetarian Burritos Recipe

We lived on the Space Coast in Florida for a time and there was a little burrito shack, Da Kine Diegos, the surfers liked to hangout.  They sold insane burritos and I miss them.

For meatless (and dairy-free) Monday, I attempted my own version of insane burritos.  After I made the burritos and called my kids down to make their own, my daughter said "Where's the sour cream?" <rolling eyes>

Ingredients

Dressing:
1/4 c olive oil
1/8 c apple cider vinegar
1/8 c lime juice
1/4 tsp of salt

Burrito:
1.5 c of dry rice (I used wild rice)
2 small - med onions
1 tbl olive oil
1 romaine lettuce heart
2 tomatoes (I'm partial to ripened on the vine)
1 - 15oz can of beans (I used black eyed)
largest tortillas you can find (check ingredients for no hydrogenated oils - tortillas are notorious for them - I used chi-chi's)

1. Start cooking the rice.  Most Mexican recipes do not use wild rice, I do because I have a pressure cooker.  I put extra water in the pressure cooker and the rice comes out a bit mushy - that's the way I like it.  However I think Jasmine rice would work well with this.

2. Chop up onions.  Put 1 tbl of olive oil in a frying pan.  Put frying pan on medium and begin cooking your onions.  You're looking to caramelize these onions.  So you'll need to take breaks from your chopping to stir them occasionally.

3.  Chop lettuce, take break to stir onions.  Chop tomato, stir onions, chop other tomato, stir onions.  Put lettuce and tomatoes in separate bowls.

4.  When onions are caramelized, drain beans and put them in with the onions, stir, put beans and onions on med low heat.

5.  While the beans warm up, warm up the tortillas in the oven/toaster oven and make the dressing.  In a tight fitting bottle (I used a ball canning jar), put in all the ingredients for the dressing, listed above.  (Note: If you don't have a bottle or jar, put it in a large bowl and whisk.)  Shake the jar.

6.  When the beans and onions are warmed, turn off the heat.

7.  Mix the rice and dressing.  Here you can mix the beans and onions as well (that's how my hubby likes it). I prefer to stack the ingredients on the tortilla.

8.  at this point, I let my kids make their own tortilla.  I place the tortilla on the counter, stack the lettuce, tomatoes, then rice then beans, then hopefully fold it up to make it a burrito that doesn't fall apart.