Pasta, Pesto & Peas--Barefoot Bloggers

Photo from http://www.stonewallkitchen.com/

It's time for the second Barefoot Bloggers post. Barefoot Bloggers is the brainchild of Tara, at Smells Like Home, where twice a month, the BB's prepare one of Ina Garten's recipes, chosen by a member of the group and post it on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month. (I will be picking number 13 in November I think!). This month's recipe is Pasta, Pesto and Peas, chosen by Elizabeth at Ugg Smell Food. For some reason, I was never that crazy about Pesto, but have been enjoying it more lately, so I was looking forward to trying this recipe--assuming that like most of Ina's recipes, this one would be a winner. You can find the recipe here or on page 101 (in my version) of Barefoot Contessa Parties! (You don't actually need me to type it out for you do you?) ;-)

I actually made this the day before I left for my week in New York because I doubted that I would be in the mood to make pesto on my first day back. Like many of the other Barefoot Bloggers, I reduced the recipe by half and also reduced the oil & mayo as well. (I used a very scant 1/8 cup of olive oil and about a 1/3 cup of mayo). What I didn't reduce was the amount of spinach--using almost the full 10 oz package as I didn't want to waste it and figured it couldn't hurt to add more veg! I also used the full amount of pesto in the salad because I wasn't thinking (actually I was thinking about packing!) and just dumped it in. These two things account for the very green and thick pesto in my salad. With all of that it was still very yummy--it tasted fresh, the peas and pine nuts were excellent in it.

Even making half the amount of salad--it was still A LOT. I ate some that day. packed some into a disposable container to take on the (10 hour!) flight to New York and took the rest to a friend at work on Monday. She really enjoyed it as well. It was fantastic to have something so delicious to eat on the plane-especially as I had requested a gluten-free meal and basically had chicken breast, veggies and salad. (what can I say--I like to see what they give you for special meals, you get served first and lately you mostly get sandwiches, heavy on the bread, for the regular meals. I figured if anyone asked I would say it was gluten-free pasta!)
I think we are two-for-two on successful, delicious recipes for the Barefoot Bloogers! The next is Parmesan Chicken to be posted Thursday, June 26th.

You can check out the other Barefoot Bloggers' pastas here!