Mint-pea pesto?

I was a bit skeptical when I saw a recipe for mint-pea pesto in Dinner: A Love Story (my newest obsession -- and it's also a blog!), but tonight called for a simple dinner, so I gave it a shot. I think it was a smashing success.

Having uploaded the picture, I'm afraid it doesn't look nearly as appetizing as it ought. The picture on the blog with the recipe looks better, because she mixed the pasta in the with sauce before serving. That's all well and good if you have the right proportions of pesto to pasta prepared, but I never do.

The gist of the recipe is that you combine in a food processor peas, olive oil, mint leaves, freshly grated Parmesan, salt, and some lemon juice and pulse until you get "the consistency somewhere in between smooth and chunky guacamole." She suggests about 1 1/2 cups of peas to 1 cup loosely packed mint leaves, but you can play by taste, if you will. Meanwhile, you've got water boiling for pasta, and while the pasta's cooking you scoop out some of the pasta water. After you've drained the pasta, you put the mint-pea paste into the pot and whisk it together with the reserved pasta water. (I prolly could've used more). Then, if you're confident, you can mix your pasta in with the pesto. I topped mine with some extras peas and parm. Left over pesto (not with pasta water) would be great on bread.

I'd happily add this meal to the rotation, but the trouble is, a cup of mint leaves is an awful lot of mint. I probably only had three quarters of a cup, but there's nearly none left in my little planter. Plus Tim actually isn't as big a fan of mint as I am, so this might be a once a season deal.

In Indy, IN

If I post in August about our July trip, maybe I'll write about September about our August trip. I'd prefer to think of myself not as a delinquent blogger, but as a fashionably late one. 

One weekend in July, Tim and I took a half day on Friday and drove down to Indianapolis for a weekend with some good friends. Donna Grace was one of my roommates in college, and she's dating a great guy who was in Tim's small group. And I approve. I believe we promised each other once that we'd have to approve the other's potential significant other if the time came. When I told DG that I'd gone on a date with Tim, she told me I should marry him. He passed that test with flying colors.

The weekend together was one of those wonderful ones with friends revolving around long conversations, long walks, and good food, of course.

And introducing a Great Horned Owl into the mix makes everything even better. Did you know that birds pant when they're hot and/or stressed? There's a special word for it, which I've forgotten at the moment.

Indianapolis has one of the largest city parks in the country. We ate our picnic lunch and listened to bull frogs (I think that's what they were? Or very strange birds), learned about the owl, walked and talked, and then sat and talked.

And in between we looked at a flock of birds on the water. I think they were cormorants.

Home for dinner, dessert, a short sleep, worship together, lunch, a sad farewell. How do the good times go by so fast?