One of our close friends has a nut allergy. Not, as I originally typed, a ‘butt’ allergy. As far as I know, she is fine with butts.

She has never eaten pesto. Ponder that for a second. No pesto. Ever.

I was watering our basil one day and thinking about how to remedy this situation and I turned to my faithful pal, the internet.

Sunflower seeds. THE DELICIOUS ANSWER WAS THERE ALL ALONG!

 I grabbed handfuls of basil and ran to the food processor. I was going to make this happen for her. Yes indeed.

So I whizzed up all the pesto ingredients and, revelation time, sunflower seed pesto is infinitely more delicious than ‘normal’ pesto. Dump the nuts and go seeds, folks. You won’t regret it.

And our nut-free friend enjoyed it too. 

Sunny Day Pesto

Makes ample amounts.

• 1 – 2 cups fresh basil leaves (look – some stalks aren’t going to hurt the whole situation.
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/3 cup parmesan cheese. (I tend to use Grana Pandano because it is cheaper and just as delicious)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• a clove of garlic, peeled (I feel like this is obvious but I don’t want to be responsible for people having garlic skin in their pesto.)
• salt and pepper to taste

Wash your basil leaves and pick them off their stalks. Shove them in the bowl of your food processor.

Dump everything else on top of the basil leaves. It will probably look something like this:

However, obviously, you can’t see the everything in this picture.

I JUST THOUGHT IT LOOKED PRETTY, OK?! Don’t judge me!

. . .

Anyway, whizz everything until it looks like pesto.

VOILA!

PESTO!

Next post: a delicious pasta recipe to use your pesto in!