5 Easy Ways to Cook with Pesto

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Trader Joe's Pesto

Trader Joe's Pesto

What exactly  is pesto you ask??

Pesto is a thick sauce made from fresh basil leaves, garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and pine nuts. All these ingredients are blended together until a smooth paste is formed. There are many ways that you can use pesto to add a wonderful flavor to your meals. Trader Joe’s sells a nice little jar of pesto that frequently is seen in our refrigerator.

Here are 5 of our favorite ways to use pesto:

1. Pasta

Yep, our number one way to eat pesto is with noodles. We like to toss the hot noodles with a couple of spoonfuls of pesto and then mix in a little parmesan cheese and black pepper. You can serve the noodles plain, or add some cooked broccoli or your favorite vegetable to this dish as well.

2. Steamed Vegetables

This is a wonderful way to make sure you eat your vegetables. We just steam up our favorite vegetables (say green beans or broccoli) and then drain away any extra water. Now toss the hot veggies with a spoonful (or two) of pesto and add some pepper (to taste) and enjoy.

3. Pesto Mayo

A quick dip or spread idea the next time you need one is pesto mayo. It is easy to make:  a spoonful of pesto and ½ cup of mayo (Start with these proportions and add more pesto if you like it a bit stronger). Season up with some salt and/ or black pepper and enjoy. This pesto mayo is also good as a sandwich spread with cheese or turkey slices. Experiment and see how many ways you can enjoy this spread.

4. Pesto on a flat bread or  frozen pizza

Pesto right from the jar makes a tasty addition to a plain flatbread or frozen plain pizza. Spread the pesto thinly onto the frozen bread of choice and heat in the oven following the package directions. You may wish to add some cheese on top. YUM! We made this one night when a “surprise” guest arrived, and we were up late talking. We had a couple of pita breads in the freezer and spread the pesto on the frozen bread. Then we tossed on whatever cheese we had and heated them up in the oven at 400 degrees for maybe 10 minutes. We waited until the cheese was nice and bubbly. Not too bad for an “emergency” snack- and our friend raved on and on about how great it tasted.

5. Eggs

This one is the most odd, but then next time you make scrambled eggs and are adding leftover vegetables or potatoes to the eggs, try a small spoonful of pesto as well. The sauce never blends into the scrambled eggs entirely in the bowl, but once the eggs hit the pan the pesto melts and flavors the entire dish. This is a great way to use up some leftovers from other meals, and to also enjoy “breakfast for dinner” in a new way.

Remember that experimenting and trying new things is the fun part of cooking.  We recommend that you start with only a small amount at first, maybe 1/2 a small spoonful and then taste the dish. If you think that there is not enough flavor, add more pesto a little at time until you like the taste.  Eventually, the more you cook and try new flavors, the more confident you will be.

These are our top 5 ways to enjoy that small jar of pesto. What are your favorite ways to use pesto?

Easy Tasty Garlic Bread

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Trader Joe's Toast

Trader Joe's Toast

Do you love garlic bread?  We do too!

We used to only eat garlic bread when we were enjoying a bowl of pasta or some other Italian –inspired dish.  As there are only two of us, it was hard at times to justify purchasing this huge loaf of bread as we would never finish it before it got all hard and stale (not to mention all those unpronounceable ingredients).

Now with this new recipe, we can enjoy eating garlic bread with all kinds of meals such as soups stews as well as when we are eating pasta. This recipe is great for small families or singles who want to enjoy garlic bread as you can make as much as you need (a slice or two for each person) and not have half a loaf of garlic bread leftover.

Here is our easy recipe to make garlic bread at home that has a ton of flavor and few ingredients (and no “weird” stuff).  We are not sure where we first saw this idea. Maybe a TV program or we read it in a cookbook perhaps- who knows- (quite possibly Rachel Ray) …Wherever we gathered this idea from- THANKS! We just love to make our garlic bread this way. If you are just learning 2 cook, this is a great, easy addition to any meal. We bet you will make this garlic bread again and again.

Trader Joe's garlic

Trader Joe's garlic bread

Ingredients:

  • A “sturdy” loaf of bread, such as Trader Joe’s Artisan bread (Roasted garlic with Thyme or Asiago cheese are both good)
  • Garlic cloves (Trader Joe’s Colossal  Garlic )
  • Trader Joe’s salted Butter (or olive oil if you like)

Lets Cook!

Basically what we are going to do here, is toast the bread, and rub the dry toasty bread with a piece of garlic and then spread with butter. So you need to cut and toast the amount of bread that you would like to eat/serve per person.  The bread also needs to be hearty or sturdy- like a handmade or Artisan loaf (sourdough works great too) with a thick crust and a chewy texture.

Colossal Garlic
Colossal Garlic

Next, peel a whole clove of garlic, and cut off one of the tips. Now rub the cut clove over the surface of the hot toasty bread. Don’t forget to rub the crusts with the garlic clove too.

Now, spread the garlicky bread with butter (or drizzle with some olive oil).

That’s it! Enjoy!!

Yes it is THAT easy to make really great garlic bread.  Now that you are trying some new recipes at home, we hope you give this one a try. It would be great served up with a home made soup, pasta meal or anything really… Do you really  need an excuse to enjoy great garlic bread?

Trader Joe's Roasted Garlic w/ Thyme

Trader Joe's Roasted Garlic w/ Thyme

Easy Recipe Vegetable Frittata for 2

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Easy Veg Frittata

Easy Veg Frittata

This is an easy recipe for a vegetable frittata that would be great for a brunch, lunch or dinner. This frittata goes together quickly and if you plan for it, you can even use up any leftover vegetables you might have from last night’s dinner.  This recipe is great for beginning cooks as it tastes terrific and (the way we made it) is actually a twist on a simple plate of scrambled eggs.  As always, our ingredients came from Trader Joe’s!

We got this idea from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters book. He actually calls the recipe “More-. Vegetables-Than Egg Frittata and it is on page 170.  We read his recipe and then modified it slightly for the items we had in the refrigerator today. We also modified the dish to be more like “scrambled eggs with lots of goodies” instead of a classic frittata which come out more like an eggy “cake” that you can serve in wedges or slices. We actually prefer the scrambled egg style, so that is what we created.

Mark notes that you can use cooked or raw vegetable when you make this frittata and that is what we did. We had some leftover zucchini from dinner a couple of nights ago, and then added in some fresh vegetables. We used slightly less vegetables then the original recipe called for, and would plan to use more next time.

Ingredients (serves 2):

  • Olive oil (for the pan)
  • ½ small sweet onion, sliced or diced
  • 2 -3 cups sliced cooked and raw vegetables (we used spinach, zucchini slices, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms) (the original recipe called for 4 to 6 cups of veggies)
  • ¼ cup fresh basil leafs (we did not have any fresh basil and used a spoonful of pesto in the egg mixture instead and that worked perfectly)
  • 1/3 -1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (he says optional, but we say use it!)
  • 2-3 eggs (we used 3 eggs for the two of us)

Lets Cook!

1. Heat the skillet (non-stick) over medium heat, and add a spoonful of oil.  Now add the onions and cook for about 5 minutes while you get all the other vegetables ready.

2. Add the chopped up vegetables (except any tender leaf like spinach or the basil leafs) and continue to cook until they are cooked and heated through the way you like them. We like our vegetables “crisp-tender” so that you can stick a fork into the vegetables and it goes in easy, but the vegetables are not “mushy”. When the veggies are ready, season them lightly with salt and pepper

3. While the vegetables are cooking, crack 3 eggs into a bowl and whisk together. Add some salt and pepper and the cheese (and pesto if you are using it).

4. When all the vegetables are ready, add the leafy vegetables (the spinach) and stir them around the pan for a minute. When they start to wilt, add the egg mixture to the pan and stir around the pan and continue to cook like you would for regular scrambled eggs. The eggs will cook, the cheese will melt and in a few minutes you will have a great frittata.

We are sorry to admit that this dish smelled so good that we just FORGOT to take a picture to show you the end result. Sorry. Next time we will try to control ourselves better and take a second to snap a photo.

We hope you try this recipe. We enjoyed making and eating this recipe so much that we are planning to make it again soon. We thought this recipe was easy and tasted GREAT.

If you are just learning to cook, are starting to cook more at home and/ or have joined the Food Revolution, this recipe would be a great one to master as it is very flexible and forgiving. You can use any kind combination of vegetables and cheese you have on hand, and this is also a great way to use up leftovers at any time during the week.

We recommend you “plan” to have some vegetables handy for the next time you are planning on serving eggs at your house.

Hey, did you make this frittata? What combination of vegetables and cheese did you use? Please take a minute to leave us a comment and let us know.

THANKS!

Easy Recipe Bean Dip

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Easy Recipe Bean Dip

Easy Recipe Bean Dip

Here is a simple recipe that you can quickly make when you need to bring an item to some kind of gathering. OR, we will admit, this is a great item to snack on while you are watching a game or a movie some night… We were planning to bring some food to a meeting on Tuesday and we thought a bean dip would be just the item!  We also thought you might be interested in learning how to make one of these dips from scratch as well.  Are you reading the Food Revolution and looking for easy recipes to cook? Here is a good one!

Not only is Easy Recipe Bean Dip delicious, it is a great recipe for beginners because there are not that many main ingredients. Also, it is not hard to make (heat, stir & chill). Finally, it is flexible- you can make it a day or two before you need to serve it or it can be ready just an hour before hand.

Even better…. This recipe is very flexible and easily modified so  you can easily add more or less of an ingredient to make it “your Special Recipe Bean Dip” that everyone will ask you to bring etc.. They might even want you to Pass It On to them! Nice!!

By the way, all the main ingredients for this recipe you can easily find in your local Trader Joe’s or your favorite grocery store:

Main Ingredients:

  • 1 can  re-fried beans (pinto or black –use what you like)
  • 1 jar salsa (your favorite- we like Trader Joe’s Salsa Authentica)
  • Shredded cheese in a package (we like to use a “Mexican Blend” but Colby or Jack is also good)
  • Taco chips for dipping

Optional Ingredients:

  • Taco seasoning
  • Sliced olives
  • Sour cream
  • Sliced Avocados

Lets Cook!

Heat the refried beans in a pan on the stove.  When warm, stir in some of your favorite salsa. We add about 1/3 of a cup of salsa to the beans. Then add ½ a cup of your shredded cheese to the pan. If you are using the taco seasoning, add about a spoonful of that too.

Stir all this together, until everything is warm and blended.

Heat beans, salsa & cheese

Beans, salsa & cheese

Pour the hot bean mixture into a serving pan (we like to use a glass pie pan) and let cool. At this point you can let it cool in the refrigerator overnight and finish it in the morning.

Easy Bean Dip

Easy Bean Dip

When cool, you can spread a thin layer of sour cream on top, and then sprinkle some of that cheese on top of the sour cream.

Bean Dip

Bean Dip

At this point, you can add olives or avocado to the top of the dip if you are using these items.

Ta-da! That’s it! You are finished … and ready to eat!

Dig into this dip with some taco chips and enjoy.

Have fun with this recipe. The next time you make it, you can tweak it a little and make it your own signature dip….Use hotter salsa, more cheese, less cheese, more taco seasoning, sliced green onions or even jalapenos on top! (eeks!) Use whatever stuff you like.

That is the great part about cooking from scratch; you are able to add your own personal creativity to your recipes.

Enjoy!

Hey drop us a note to tell us what changes you made to this recipe to make it more your own…