Did you know that basil comes in a paste?

For this two-part post, I am cooking vicariously through my roommate who is trying to make her own pesto sauce. Armed with dried basil, olive oil, minced garlic, grated Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and a magic bullet blender, she has made one very brave attempt so far.

The result was a pale, goopy, oily mush that didn't coat the pasta very well and that tasted solely like Parmesan. That's the thing with pesto though, I guess: you have to play around with the proportions until you get it just right.

We also concluded from trial #1 that part of the problem was the basil--you really need fresh basil leaves to make this work (we think). So off to Walmart we went.

After scouring the baking and spices aisle, the produce section, and even the random little kiosks scattered throughout the store, the only basil product we found aside from dried basil was basil paste.

Yep, that's a thing:

(from: http://goodenessgracious.com/2011/03/oh-my-sweet-basil.html)

Granted, I've never tried basil paste before, so it could be perfectly good and work perfectly well for cooking and such. Maybe we were still a little weirded out by the liquid egg product (made from real eggs!) that I had spotted earlier in our shopping trip, but we were put off by the paste. 

But somewhere, out there, preferably in Kirksville, there has to be some fresh basil. That, and maybe less Parmesan cheese, will guarantee the perfect pesto, we're just sure of it! So stay tuned, because the search continues...

At least Kinky was on sale...

(from: http://www.drinkhacker.com/2012/12/21/review-kinky-liqueur/)