Ceasar salad, Pesto, and Rhubarb Pie

This morning we were at the farmer’s market and saw David Adjey! I have no idea what he’s doing here, I heard it’s for some festival or some such thing. I don’t know if non-Canadians will know who he is…but he used to be on a show called Restaurant Makeover on Food Network Canada. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me…I really would have loved a picture with him. I didn’t even have a pen and paper for an autograph. And I was too shy to go up and talk to him. So I was just creepy and kind of gawked from a distance. Smooth. Anyway, the point of talking about the farmer’s market was to talk about all of the nice, fresh ingredients I acquired for tonight’s dinner.

First up, a lady had some really nice looking basil for quite a reasonable price, so I made some sun-dried tomato pesto, inspired by the one in Vegan with a Vengeance. My basil plants are still waaaay too young to make pesto. Anyhoo, the bf is allergic to nuts so i left those out. Is it still called pesto without nuts? I'm not sure. Anyway it was still good! my tomatoes were the kind packed in oil so I didn't have to boil them in water like the recipe says. However, in the original recipe you're supposed to use this water afterwards in the actual pesto. So this resulted in me eyeballing the ingredients. The bf has never had pesto before and he really seemed to like it. I have quite a bit leftover, I think it would be awesome on pizza.

To go with it I made ceasar salad from Veganomicon. I even roasted the garlic bulbs in the oven and made croutons out of some homemade french bread I had in the freezer. No being lazy for me. I can't remember what real ceasar dressing tastes like (it's been 10 years!) but it tasted what I think I remember it tasted like. The bf said it wasn't the same, but that it was still good. I have tons of dressing leftover...looks like ceasar salads for me for the rest of the week.

Also at the farmer's market we got a huge batch of fresh rhubarb. What do you do with that much rhubarb other than make a pie? My recipe was based on this one, but I made some changes.

Rhubarb Pie:

• 1 recipe for a double 9" pie crust (whatever one you like to use)
  
• 4 c. chopped rhubarb
• 1 c. white sugar
• 6 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp. earth balance

Preheat oven to 450 F. Combine sugar and flour. Sprinkle 1/4 of the mixture on the bottom of the pie. Pile rhubarb on top. Sprinkle remaining flour/sugar mix on top. Dot earth balance in small gobs on top of this. Put on top of pie crust.

On lowest rack in oven, bake pie for 15 min. Lower temp. to 350 F and bake for another 40 min.