INHALE, EXHALE, GREENS

Bella shares my love of necklaces, Nutella, novels, and flavored lip gloss.

She does NOT share my love of green vegetables and deep breathing.

Hearing "deepen your breath" is as natural to my kids (and I'm sure as annoying) as "find your inside voice" and "put your napkin in your lap."

I'm also a broken record about the importance of eating green vegetables.

Last week, I bought a ridiculously large bag of pea shoots from the farmers' market. Bella was disgusted. She has perfected that swallow-grimace-holding-back-vomit look. 

"Ooh girl, I'm going to make you some pea shoot pesto that you will eat and like."

"Fine. Try. But I'm not going to like it. 'Cause those pea shoots are green."

Chlorophyll is what makes plants green. This pigment is powerful in flavor (parsley juice, blech!) and in function (photosynthesis). The chlorophyll helps plants absorb energy from the sun. Plants use this light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars (plant food). Then these green plants spit out oxygen as their garbage. Their garbage is the precious oxygen I'm inhaling deeply as I try to get my children to eat green vegetables. Full fucking circle.

I thought about this pesto for a few days. These pea shoots would need a lot of transformation to please my Bella. So I roasted garlic until it was soft and sweet. I bought goat cheese, picked lemons, and toasted some almonds.

After softening the pea shoots for 30 seconds in boiling water, I shocked them in an ice bath to stop them from cooking.

Some friends told me they had just experienced gnarly stringy pea shoot pesto. No way Bella was going to eat anything stringy. So I pulverized the hell out of the shoots. 

Dash came in and started heaping spoonfuls of pea shoot purée into his mouth. He is one of those strange children who will eat anything. And then he pushed me aside and took over the pesto-making. 

"More cheese. I want to squirt in the cooked garlic. Gimme the lemon. Salt, mama? Yeah, salt." He kept tasting the pesto and narrowly missing the sharp blade with his little fingers. So I handed him a tasting spoon.

I found my Bella curled up in a chair with her book.  I slid a big spoonful of the pesto into her mouth. 

She kept her eyes glued to her book, waved her hand at me like she was Brando in The Godfather, and said, "Fine. I'll have it on pasta."

Normally I don't let her talk to me this way. But she knew that I so totally told her so with this one. She could talk to me any way she wanted. 

I cooked some farfalle and then watched her eat a whole bowl of it coated in pea shoot pesto—eyes still glued to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I tried to get her to look up from her book and laugh, "What planet did Dash come from? He's sure not from earth." 

Silence.

I continued. I told her I had a theory about Dash's boundless energy and his crazy love of green vegetables. I've been reading about these sacoglossan sea slugs that scarf up algae and actually perform photosynthesis within their bodies. Pea puree plus California sun. We have a solar-powered Dash performing kleptoplasty in our very own house.

Bella was not amused.

She's also not going to be amused when I tell her that tonight we're having nettle and walnut pesto on rack of lamb. I can just hear her now, "Mama, why would you ruin a perfectly good lamb popsicle with NETTLES!" And then she will eat it. And then, I'll bet you a hundred dollars, she will like it.

PEA SHOOT, ROASTED GARLIC, GOAT CHEESE, AND ALMOND PESTO

printable recipe

4 cloves garlic, unpeeled

1 tablespoon salt, to blanch pea shoots

6 cups pea shoots

1/2 cup goat cheese

1/3 cup parmesan, grated

1/2 cup blanched almonds, lightly toasted

juice/zest from 1/2 lemon

1/2-3/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350° F. Wrap unpeeled cloves of garlic in tin foil. Bake until garlic is soft. 30-45 minutes. 

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add salt. Blanch the pea shoots in salted boiling water for 30 seconds. Shock the shoots in ice water. Pour shoots into a colander. Use your hands to squeeze out most of the excess water. Pulverize pea shoots in a food processor until smooth.

Squirt cooked roasted garlic out of the skin into the pea purée. Add goat cheese, parmesan, almonds, juice/zest of lemon, and 1/2 cup of the olive oil. Pulverize for 10 seconds. Scrape down the sides. Pulverize again. Taste. Add salt, pepper, and more of any ingredient that's lacking. If it's too thick add some more olive oil. This keeps in the fridge for up to a week. Cover the top with a thin layer of olive oil to prevent browning. Or you can freeze the pesto in an ice cube tray and then store the cubes in a ziploc bag.