Fancy Carrot top Pesto

Every Friday evening we head to our local farmer's market for good eats, live music, playtime, and of course awesome local fresh fruits & veggies! Last week I came across these lovely, colorful carrots!

 They looked so pretty bunched together that I just couldnt pass them up! As I was making my purchase, the vendor asked me if I liked pesto..umm, yea! He then told me that carrot tops makes some of THE BEST pesto! who knew!? So I came home and went to work...after some research, turns out carrot pesto is pretty yummy, and VERY good for you! 

I started by trimming all the stems, trying to just use the leaves, and discarding the thicker stem parts(mostly because my blender sucks and I knew it wouldn't blend up the thicker pieces very well) 

I tossed everything into my blender and let it whirl away. The end result was this lovely green pesto!

Fancy Carrot Top Pesto

Ingredients

Bunch of carrot tops (from about 8 carrots)

5 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 cup olive oil

1 cup Parmesan Cheese

1 cup toasted nuts ( i used walnuts) 

zest of 1 lemon and Juice of half lemon.

salt and pepper to taste

Remove stems from carrots, save carrots for another delicious recipe. Roughly chop tops and add to blender or food processor. Add garlic, half of oil, half of cheese and nuts to blender as well. To toast nuts, heat dry skillet over medium-low heat and add nuts, keep them moving so they dont burn. Remove from heat once nuts become fragrant. add zest and juice to blender, give it a pulse to allow ingredients to blend together some, add more oil as needed, remainder of cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy over some veggies, pasta, crusty bread or...do what we did:

we made a pizza using the yummy carrot top pesto as our sauce! And we topped it with lots of yummy veggies from the Farmers Market. 

my little helper...aka: Nerd :)

I had to have a bite before I took a picture of the finished product! It was amazing! kinda sweet, kinda wonderful..and really a great way to use up what would normally go into the compost bucket (or to the chickens) so use up those carrot tops and make this pesto! the recipe makes a few cups so you could freeze half of it if you dont know what to do with all of it right away. Happy Cooking! -Jess