Carrot Top Pesto

My friends are starting to get their first shares from their CSAs and, I have to say, it’s humbling. These CSA farmers are not messing around. My friends, living in Illinois and Michigan, are getting boxes full of wildly diverse produce. Asparagus, bok choy, giant leeks, plump spring onions, spring garlic and scapes, spinach, lettuce, carrots, pea shoots, radishes, broccoli, and more. Even strawberries.

Me? I’m weeding. The weeds have been just awful this year, and the mosquitoes have arrived early. We’ve had a LOT of rain, and there is flooding all over the state. When it’s not raining, it is humid and hot (80 that feels like 90). This means the plants are exploding out there, but so are the weeds. So I’ve been putting in a lot of time keeping the beds relatively weed free. And pruning the tomatoes so they won’t blight before it dries out.

It takes me a while to catch on to some things in gardening. For instance, spring onions. I have been trying to grow scallions and “green onions” for two years now from seed. Only this year did it occur to me that if I pulled up some of the onions I planted a few weeks ago, they would be good spring onions. Oh, you start from seed onions, not from onion seeds! I had known that onions come up really quickly in the spring, so I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that I could plant some extra, even close together, and harvest them at the same time the lettuce and radishes come in. Next year, I’ll plant more.

Meanwhile, here I am on a Tuesday night wondering what to eat. The radishes are gone. So are the spring onions. The lettuce is bolted or soggy. The basil is small. I let the asparagus get away from me. I do have some nice kale. I also could have pea shoots, but I’m not willing to give up the pea vines now that they have flowers (am I missing something here? Like, plant more peas to get the shoots??)

I did go out and thin the carrots, and ended up with a big bunch of carrot greens. Carrot greens have never looked all that appealing to me, but a trip around the internet says that carrot top pesto is actually good.

I don’t have scapes yet, but a few of my garlic plants weren’t strong enough to push through the straw. They kind of made their way weakly out of the side, so I went ahead and pulled a few. No bulbs, but very nice garlicky whites, like spring onions.

I went with a standard pesto recipe, though some people use lemon juice and hazelnuts and other nontraditional ingredients. I did substitute slivered almonds for the pine nuts, toasted. And because I was skeptical, I threw in about 2 Tbs of basil and a sprig of mint with 1 1/2 cups or so of carrot tops. A handful of parmesan, 1/2 tsp of salt, the green garlic, and olive oil drizzled in until I got the consistency I wanted.

And, I gotta say, it is GOOD! Really fresh tasting (I wasn’t liking the “earthy” description on some sites). Bright green and actually, I’d eat it any day in place of basil pesto.

Now I just have to wait. There are lots of pea blossoms, the beets are in good shape, and the second crop of radishes are filling out nicely. In the meantime, I’ll just eat kale and hope the lettuce bounces back. . . . oh, and there is this one container of frozen beet pesto in the freezer and a bunch of dried tomatoes. . . .