possible idea for $$ from herbs

I am reading "Under the Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes (great book, by the way) and she mentions making pestos from herbs other than basil.  It never even occured to me that a person could do such a thing!  She makes lemon-parsley pesto for fish, arugula pesto for pasta or crostini, mint pesto for shrimp, and sage pesto for white beans or grilled sausages. 

They are made the same way as "regular" pesto, with olive oil, garlic, and pine nuts.  How clever is that?  Also, easy to grow and fairly inexpensive to make!

I bet these pestos would sell great at a farmer's market.  Somebody want to give it a try?

Lambs Quarters aka Wild Spinach came up like crazy in our garden last year. It was probably the number one 'weed', second to grass. So instead of yanking it all out we made a pesto and sold it at markets, using our own garlic and marjoram. We used sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts, which we will be growing ourselves this year. No possibility of home grown olives unfortunately.

The pesto sold fairly consistently and was well received by our customers. We gave out samples on nacho chips, which really helped sales.

i love making pestos out of things other than basil. id have to say one of my favs is nettle pesto, around this time of year when the fresh shoots are coming out mmmmmm

Oh, those are great ideas!  I should be able to try the nettle pesto in a few weeks in my area.  I will try the sunflower seeds, too.  Much better than using the pine nuts in the bins at Winco, which are imported from China (I asked).  Thanks!

I just made a really good nettle pesto. Make sure you put it in the food processor, not a weaker blender so it chops up enough. Not really for the stings, but to take away the unpleasant furry texture.

IdahoFolk wrote:
Oh, those are great ideas!  I should be able to try the nettle pesto in a few weeks in my area.  I will try the sunflower seeds, too.  Much better than using the pine nuts in the bins at Winco, which are imported from China (I asked).  Thanks!

If you had the space, you could grow a pine nut tree - there are several varieties that yield, with cold tolerances down to zone 2.  We've ordered some, as we wanted a few pine trees anyways, and this way we also get a yield...

My fave is green garlic pesto:)

I'm ordering some pine nut trees as well but of course they take a few years to yield significant amounts of nuts.

In my climate  "a few years" till you've got pinenuts would be a bit of an understatement, since it's around 25-30 years till the trees produce at all, and at least 50 till they really get going.
Beautiful trees for the grandkids to enjoy!

Hmmm thats a shame. The nurseries around these parts claim that their korean pines will start yielding at about 4-8 years of age.

I think pine nut will be to time consuming for harvesting and uncraking it, no ?

few years ago we made a pesto from olive oil, basilic, nettles and wallnut, not very good (cause of nettles i think)

Real pesto has parmeggiano too

Genovese pesto has Parmesian cheese.  It is not as common in other pestos.