Pesto... almost

Tonight we had pesto for dinner... sort of. Last week one of the stores had bags (at least 2 cups of basil) for MK 75 (54 cents). This was a first and I was quite excited. I also had pine nuts in the freezer from several months ago when I bought a bag for an exorbitant price but you have to buy it when you see it. Now, the missing ingredient of parmesan or anything remotely close... it was just not too be!! There are 3 grocery stores I shop at regularly and then 3-4 more that I go to for random items. There is no such thing as a one stop shop! The same shop with the basil and pine nuts also occasionally carries romano or parmesan cheeses. However, when you see them you must buy it because it will be gone in a day or 2 and there is no telling when the next shipment will arrive!! so, tonight with no virtually no other food choices and basil about to go bad I decided to improvise and use cheddar and a locally produced gouda type cheese! So we dump it all in the blender and... it won't blend!! This blender is a thorn in John's flesh everytime he thinks about it.. We paid about $35 for it and it is totally useless! It has no power to actually blend much of anything!! The one redeeming value was that it came with a grinder attachment that I used to grind coffee. Until the day that the top of the grinder disappeared. We can only deduce that Karis threw it away (a whole other issue. Mathilda has rescued shoes, cups, make up but she may have missed this one!) So now the blender is virtually useless! In the end we had to take out the pesto and chop it in to reasonably small pieces by hand!! Overall consensus: in a pinch you can use cheddar cheese for pesto although it is not ideal. It is all interesting. I never anticipated being able to buy parmesan when we moved here and truly, the availability of items is such a blessing - the lack of consistency, however, is a challenge. I try not to make my life difficult by making foods with a ton of expensive, difficult to find items but you never knwo when soemthing that has been everywhere for months ( sweetend condensed milk) will suddenly disappear!

Okay, i wrote this weeks ago and am just now finishing and posting. Last week Foodworths got a truck from South Africa - it was quite exciting! They had laundry detergent designed for front loader washers, brown sugar and parmesan all at one time! I have stocked up on the first 2 and decided the latter was just flat out too expensive!