Someone gave me several of those vegetable spiral cutting things the other day and I decided to try them out. Wow… I am hooked! In 15 minutes I had a super delicious and healthy plate of zucchini noodles topped with the perfect springtime pesto full of lemon and garlic flavors. First of all, I want to say the cheapest and simplest design was hands down the easiest one and made beautiful “zoodles”. The other one had all sorts of parts and things to turn and push and it was a total fail in my opinion. In this case, more was NOT better. I like simple so the less moving parts the better for me.
The lemon balm pesto will knock your socks off! Lemon balm is in the mint family so it grows and spreads easily and only requires water during the hot summer. It not only makes great pesto but the dried leaves are a fantastic tea. It is totally safe and has natural relaxing, anxiety-reducing properties. A great tea for children (and adults) who have trouble sleeping. In our school garden the children love to mix lemon balm, spearmint and peppermint for a delicious and soothing iced or hot tea blend.
RECIPE for LEMON BALM PESTO from vegalicious.recipes (makes about 1 ½ cups)
2 cups fresh lemon balm leaves
1 cup fresh parsley leaves
2 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ cup raw cashews, soaked for an hour or so
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup nutritional yeast
Juice from a lemon
Place herbs, oil, garlic, and lemon juice in food processor or blender and pulse until smooth. Drain the water from the cashews (but save it) and add the nuts and the nutritional yeast to processor and pulse until it gets creamy. If it is too thick add some of the cashew water until the consistency is just right.
RECIPE for ZOODLES (makes about 2 servings)
4 medium zucchini, scrubbed well
1 TBSP olive oil
Use your VEGGETTI or similar device to make your zucchini into noodles, saving them to a large bowl. Heat the oil in a large wok style pan and add all the noodles. Carefully stir/toss them until they are all heated through, about 5 minutes at most. You do NOT want them to get mushy, they should be firm and al dente. You are basically just heating them, not cooking them. You can add some salt and pepper at the end, toss once more and spoon in a few big dollops of the lemon balm pesto. Mix it into the zucchini and let heat through for about a minute. Plate it up and top with a bit of parmesan cheese or a sprinkle of nutritional yeast if you are vegan.
Dive in! Feel free to add more of the addictive lemon balm pesto. It is also great on bread, real pasta and asparagus and probably lots of other things I haven’t tried it on yet 🙂
the pollen count 