Wasabi Arugula Pesto and the weekend recap

Hope that you all had a great 4th of July!  I had TONS of fun this weekend, starting with the NKOTBSB concert that I went to with my friend SL.  The concert was so fun, growing up I was a huge New Kids (and Nysnc) fan!  Ladies let me tell you, they still got it!  It was so fun to hear some of the old classics remixed and updated as well as a couple mashups of New Kids and Backstreet.  The boys all still look great, Donnie especially- since he ripped off his shirt and he had amazing abs!  I tried to take pictures, but they came out horribly…  

The next day my friends and I went out to the Camarillo outlets for my friends birthday.  This is becoming our traditional birthday celebration since her birthday just so happens to fall on the amazing 4th of July sale weekend!  We spend the WHOLE day shopping and filled the car to the MAX.  What you see below is the result of 9 hours of shopping and 5 determined girls.  Reganomics and trickledown theory at work, just doing my part to stimulate the economy!  

While I didn’t cook much over this long weekend, I did have some great eats.  One of them was at Bulgarini gelato in Pasadena, CA.  One of the best things about Bulgarini is that one cup allows you 3 flavors of gelato!  I went with almond, chocolate with sea salt and goats milk with cocoa nibs.  It was just the thing to beat the summer heat! The other place the Brazilian and I went to is called Salsa and Beer where they had a yummy bean/salsa concoction and some of the best taquitos, which I will try to duplicate soon! 

You may have seen in Trader Joe’s they now carry something called Wasabi Arugula!  What a perfect matching the spiciness of wasabi and the peppery notes of arugula.  On the bag Trader Joe’s put a nice little recipe for some Wasabi Arugula Pesto sauce. 

Wasabi Arugula Pesto
adapted from Trader Joe’s

1 1/2 cup Wasabi Arugula
1/3 cup olive oil
2 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 garlic clove
1 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese

1.  Fill a bowl with ice and water and set aside.  Add 2 1/4 tsp of salt to a sauce pan full of water and bring to a boil.  Add in the arugula and let the water return to a boil.

2.  Remove arugula from the pan to stop cooking process and place in the ice bath.  Squeeze out the excess water from the arugula (use paper towels if necessary) and place in a blender.

3.  In the blender add in olive oil, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. pepper, garlic and parmesan cheese.  Blend until the mixture is well combined and resembles a pesto paste. 

Serve over pasta, on toasted bread or use as a marinade!  The wasabi heat was very subtle in the pesto, I just served it over some left over macaroni that I had lying around.  This is a great way to use up that arugula that’s a little past its prime for salad eating.  I think this pesto would be great as a sauce over fish!  The rest of my pesto will probably go towards a veggie stir fry.