Sundried Tomato & Kale Pesto, bold in flavour & packed with nutrients!
This Kale and Sundried Tomato Pesto is bold in flavour and teaming with nutrients. Combining kale, sunflower seeds, almonds, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, lemon, and olive oil to create a delicious pesto in just 5 minutes. With kale season coming to the end now in the North Island of New Zealand due to the white butterfly that like to feast on kale in the warm months, this is your last chance to make the most it.
Kale is a nutrient-dense superstar with good amounts of vitamin A, K, B6, and C, minerals calcium, potassium, copper, and manganese. The nutrient density will vary on what soil and growing conditions the kale has been grown in, so growing your own organically in high-quality soil is the best option.
In our organic garden, I regularly feed the soil with seaweed tea, composted grass clippings, worm farm casting and liquid. We create our own compost which is from kitchen scraps, paper, and grass clipping. This brings in the microbiology of worms, organisms, and nutrients that are required for healthy soil and therefore healthy plants. Over at my personal Instagram @nutritionbynaturenz you can see my garden there.
At the moment in our garden, we have baby spinach, rocket, lettuce, parsley, and leftover from winter we have celery, kale, leeks, and silverbeet.
The key to growing your own produce is to just start, start with a pot of lettuces, then move to a garden on the deck and then into the garden with garden beds. I am a totally random gardener, I put veggies all over the place and mix it up with flowers but I always seem to get great results!
This week I am putting a layer of compost over the garden and collecting seaweed to add to my seaweed tea. I am setting up a new potting area in our old veggie cart which I used to sell veggies at the gate from. So to keep up to date on my gardening adventures @nutritionbynaturenz
In this recipe, kale can be substituted with parsley, silverbeet, and spinach. A basil and sun-dried tomato pesto are really nice too. Enjoy and send me your gardening photo and recipes creations via Instagram.
Intuitive Nutrition Kale & Sundried Tomato Pesto
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup Sunflower Seeds
- 1/3 cup Almonds
- 1 cup Sundried Tomatoes
- 3/4 cup Local Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1/2 Juice of a lemon and zest
- 2 Garlic Cloves
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Place all the ingredients in the food processor and whizz for 1 – 2 minutes depending of required consistency.
- Keeps in the fridge for one week or can freeze up to 3 months.
- This pesto combines nicely croute, rice crackers, sandwiches, with fish or chicken.
