It's February, and we are still going strong on our vegetarian eating one day a week! How is everyone else doing? Just remember, even changing one meal a week can have a positive environmental impact! Meat, come at a shockingly high cost for the earth around us. Producing meat products uses so much water, create so much waste (including plastic), and emits a lot of greenhouse gases.

Beef uses 11 times the water and produces 5 times the greenhouse gases of other animal proteins, so if you want the most bang for your environmental buck, that is where to start. 

We are still looking for vegetarian recipes to add to our arsenal, so I thought I would share some of our attempts and successes with you. My husband is an awesome cook, so I know we will find some good stuff to share. 

This week, we made pesto pasta with avocado, spinach, peas, and asparagus. We were inspired by this recipe from Simply Recipe, but The Boy added asparagus. I am not sure the asparagus added that much, to be honest. Honestly, based on the avocado and the basil, I would probably call this a summer dish, not winter, but it still tasted delicious!

You can find the recipe at the link (and honestly it is pretty simple), but it gave us the chance to use some of the basil pesto The Boy made with basil we grew ourselves! How cool is that? Here is the recipe:

3 cups of fresh basil leaves
5 cloves garlic
3/4 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup fresh parsley

Put everything in a food processor or blender. Blend it.

The Boy put our pesto into an ice tray and froze it in parts so we could bring it back when needed. It makes me so happy, because I LOVE pesto. It sometimes makes me feel a little sick (I am sure dependent on what nuts they used). I don't care. I will eat it anyway. Hope you can use this trick to make simple pesto pastas too!

Our Thoughts Afterwards

Like I said, it might be even yummier in the summer when you can get all the vegetable ingredients fresh. I did think it was good, and you really can't go wrong with pasta, but I would have left the asparagus out too. If you want to have it in the winter, I have seen a variation with white beans that might be a little more substantial and a little more on point for the season.

Happy cooking, you crazy part-time vegetarians!