Sun Dried Tomato Pesto

Monday is almost over, whew! And happy Earth Day! Doing anything special to celebrate? Not me … besides being a vegan, driving an electric car, and composting. :-) Composting is an interesting adventure that can be messy and take up a lot of space, but LifeHacker posted a super easy method to create instant compost with a blender! I love this and can’t wait to try it for our potted herb and kale gardens. Since my main Vitamix container is starting to show it’s age after being used multiple times a day for over 3 years, I’m thinking of making it a composting container and ordering a new one for food, we’ll see.

While we were at the party Saturday night, the lead singer of the band and I took some interesting comments for being vegan from a critiquing couple such as, “that sounds awful!” and “what, why?!” I just brushed them off and really was not bothered by them, but wondered if I responded to them as good as I could have. It was a tricky situation since they started the topic, but made it clear they weren’t interested in our actual reasons for going vegan and I wasn’t about to get into a heated debate.  But this Chic Vegan article arms us vegans with simple and positive responses that aren’t preachy or off-putting and makes me feel ready for future events.

I also found time over the weekend to add a huge basil plant to our garden which I’ll probably be replacing soon since they never seem to last long for me! Maybe because I robbed a huge chunk of basil leaves for this feisty sun dried tomato pesto recipe I created to go with a simple spiral sliced zucchini salad with hemp seeds and nutritional yeast for dinner last night.

The color is interesting to say the least…

But the flavor is fabulous! It has a rich and tangy pesto flavor with added zing from the balsamic vinegar and sweet tomatoes and a veggie boast from the spinach.

It was perfect for dipping fork loads of the zucchini noodles for a fun meal.

And I had leftovers to get creative with for dinner tonight. I shop a lot at Costco for bulk buying organic produce and I’ve noticed our local location has started carrying more vegan foods in the last few months with cheap non-GMO tofu, organic chia seeds, hemp seeds, and I found this reasonably priced box of Gardenburger Malibu Frozen Organic Vegan burgers.

Not a lot of protein, but loaded with organic veggies and low-calorie.

It looks like a regular veggie burger and the stove top or microwave cooking instructions are very simple and fast.

I decided to have a little fun with the pesto leftovers, the burger, and Trader Joe’s Vegan mozzarella shreds.

I layered the pesto and the mozzarella shreds on the patty after cooking it.

And served with lightly steamed broccoli for a simple Monday night dinner.

The burgers have a great texture that held together nicely while cooking, I really liked that the edges gained a crispy texture for a little crunch and the large visible veggie chunks in the patty. The flavor was also impressive with a savory herb variety while not being too salty. The pesto added a lot of zing to the patty making another fun dinner.

And I had a dinner guest begging for a sample.