Pauper’s “Raw” Sun-dried Tomato Pesto and Life-Lemon Juice at Chez Snips, Part 2

I ran out of lemon juice, but I doubt that jives metaphorically with life not giving me lemons anymore. My point is that there was plenty of “life-giving-me-lemon”-juice left over after I made a pound and a half of roasted jerusalem artichokes, and plenty of free time. What do you do in this situation?

1. You get a haircut (check)
2. You eat super healthy and affordably (and check)

So I went back to my fabulous hairdresser, Nadyne Kasta of Chez Snips, who even sneaked me in before she sneaked out of town for some birthday celebrations. Of course, I brought jam to thank her. Then I went home feeling 100% better to blend nuts.

Raw Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 cup sunflower seeds (soaked overnight and dehydrated in your oven until dry, or in a dehydrator)
3 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp lemon juice
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup parsley (or basil)
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes, coarsely chopped, or snipped with scissors (basically I just wanted to use my amazing home-made oven-dried tomatoes. My goodness they were good)

In a blender or a food processor (preferably the latter), process the garlic cloves, sunflower seeds, olive oil, lemon juice and salt. Process until very well combined and you have a pesto consistency. It’s going to be really, really thick. If you want, you can add a little water, or not dehydrate the sunflower seeds as much, but that takes some of the crispness out of the pesto, and with raw food you don’t want to give up any crispness without a fight. So fight that blender until everything’s processed.

Then add the chopped/hacked/snipped parsley or basil. Process until well combined. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and process until combined. This may take forever if you don’t have a VitaMix or a good food processor, but it’s worth it, and there’s actual cooking involved, so you’re not going to burn anything. Dehydrating the nuts doesn’t give as great a flavour as toasting them, so if you don’t care about raw, just make this as a standard pesto by heating the probably not soaked and dehydrated nuts in a small frying pan for a few minutes, moving them around until they’re browned on all sides and aromatic.

Serve with pasta (wheat or zucchini), or as a dip or spread. Adjust the lemon juice content (unless you just ran out like me, and are forced to use lime juice instead. Lime was interesting…but not lemon. I guess I’m just happy life gave me lemons and not limes, though maybe that would inspire to cook more Thai and Mexican, neither of which are bad things).

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