Spinach Pesto, a Constellation Recipe

Constellation is the name of Bridgework’s Buyers’ Collaborative. As part of that initiative, we share recipes and information for using and preserving fresh foods.

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Spinach Pesto

This week, Constellation members ordered a large quantity of spinach. Fresh spinach can be used in a multitude of ways and easily frozen for later use. Most often, when spinach is sold fresh, it comes in 1/2 lb bags or bunches- for this reason, I created the recipe based on using a 1/2 lb of spinach. It’s quick and easy, so this recipe can be used to create a fast and fresh Spring meal, or can be used to set aside pesto to use with pasta, in soups, and on sandwiches in Winter. I envision adding it to our Friday Night Pizza on dark and cold nights.

If you don’t have a scale, and didn’t buy spinach in 8 oz bunches, this is what a 1/2 lb looks like. It is enough to over flow a salad bowl.

If making pesto in a blender, vitamix or food processor- it helps to put the firmer ingredients in closer to the blades and the more tender ingredients on top.

Puree the mixture until the ingredients are all incorporated. That half pound of spinach and the other ingredients should end up crushing down to about this much pesto.

If you are eating the pesto fresh with pasta, you can now add it to your waiting noodles. I usually reserve about a 1/4 of pasta water to add back to the pasta in the pot and then add the pesto and mix to incorporate. This is a pretty mild pesto, and can be eaten hot or room temperature.

If you are planning to freeze your pesto, you can now place 1/2 cup scoops of pesto on a baking sheet lined with parchment. I do not use re-usable parchment here because, once the pesto is frozen I cut up the sheet and wrap each half cup of pesto in the parchment before adding to the freezer container.

Place the baking sheet in the freezer until the pesto is solidly frozen, usually about 2-3 hrs. Then remove from freezer, cut the parchment and wrap each pesto serving completely in parchment before adding to your freezer container. I use wide mouth mason/ball jars or freezer bags. The parchment helps keep the pesto fresher and prevents any sticking between servings. When ready to use the pesto, remove from freezer and drop into soups and pastas, or defrost to use on sandwiches and pizzas.

Constellation Spinach Pesto
PREP TIME: 5 MIN COOKING TIME: 2 MIN SERVES: 4-6

Ingredients

Pesto:

8oz spinach
1.5 cups walnuts
1tsp salt
3-4 garlic cloves
Pepper to your taste
3.5 oz of parmesan cheese 1.5 tbsp olive oil

Materials for freezing:

tray and parchment paper

freezer safe container: mason jars, glass or plastic containers, freezer bags

Directions

1. Crush garlic and chop parmesan cheese into cubes.

2. Place these in a blender, Vitamix, or food processor first, followed by the spinach ( you might have to push it in there to fit), walnuts, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

3. Close the lid and process until all is smooth and the texture is consistent.

4. If you are eating the pesto fresh with pasta, you can now add it to your waiting noodles. I usually reserve about a 1/4 of pasta water to add back to the pasta in the pot and then add the pesto and mix to incorporate. This is a pretty mild pesto, and can be eaten hot or room temperature.

5. If you are planning to freeze your pesto, you can now place 1/2 cup scoops of pesto on a baking sheet lined with parchment. I do not use re-usable parchment here because, once the pesto is frozen I cut up the sheet and wrap each half cup of pesto in the parchment before adding to the freezer container.

6. Place the baking sheet in the freezer until the pesto is solidly frozen, usually about 2-3 hrs. Then remove from freezer, cut the parchment and wrap each pesto serving completely in parchment before adding to your freezer container. I use wide mouth mason/ball jars or freezer bags. The parchment helps keep the pesto fresher and prevents any sticking between servings. When ready to use the pesto, remove from freezer and drop into soups and pastas, or defrost to use on sandwiches and pizzas.

Grief & Gratitude, April 21, 2024

I’ve been holding my grief and gratitude a little tighter lately. While I have complete faith in our ability to overcome what we’ve done to ourselves- faith and trust, if they are true, are based in reality. Clarity. Awareness.

I’m holding my grief and gratitude close because so many people get really upset when I express my belief we could actually be doing so much more for each other. I am incredibly attuned to assessing people’s capacity for change. I know we are not stretching enough and there are reasons for that, we need to address those. That’s how change works. And, my faith in us that we could actually do it, actually create a more peaceful world, makes a lot of people really frustrated. Even people who really want a more peaceful world. And, I love us so fiercely, I just keep trying. And goodness, it hurts. But, I won’t let go. I promise.

I grieve how many people want to talk about boundaries as in “no, I won’t do that for you” instead of “yes, I will refuse to harm them or us or me.” I grieve that we think boundaries are something me make and they can keep us safe. That we have decided to spend all our time there, protecting ourselves instead attending to where we cross someone else’s boundaries. Boundaries are organic. Crossing them severs the connections between us.

I’m grieving that we aren’t doing better. We aren’t trying harder, let’s be honest. And it makes people mad when I say this. But look, look around. Some of us are giving everything and some of us are just not.  What risks have you taken towards collective liberation today?

Some of us are really not trying very hard but feel like we should be and don’t know where to start so instead retreat. That’s not going to help us. Yelling at those retreating isn’t going to help us either.

I don’t say this to be punishing or mean. If I did, I’d probably get a better reaction, more people would probably relate to my fury if it was a punishing fury. But few people know what to do with requests for accountability except deflect them. Requests for accountability, they are bids for connection. We are all trying so hard to connect, to show each other what is needed.

We need more people building their capacity to give rather than caving to the conditioning. The cultural paradigms that got us here will not get us out. “What do you want us to do?” I want us to learn how to be together when we feel uncomfortable and I want us to feel uncomfortable about a lot more things. I want us to lean into learning a new way of doing almost everything.

We need more people capable of sacrificing. Learning how to do that in a way that is nourishing instead of depleting. I am so grieved by how little we will risk for what would amount to absolutely everything. I am so very grieved that so many of us would really like a more peaceful world and more leaders who care and more functional society- so long as it comes about without the loss of any comfort or security. Well. That, is just not how it works. I grieve that too, because it could have worked more that way if we had gotten started sooner. Courage is an essential element of compassion. We need to cultivate greater courage.

I’m grateful I did get started long ago. I’m grateful to have wisdom about the world, about what I know and what I don’t and where to look for new information. And about people. About how to do things subversively, often so subversively it goes unnoticed, bypassing systems of harm. I’m grateful I get to share it. Grateful there are people with who I am holding hands and standing heart to heart.

I’m grieving there are not more of us, yet. And grateful, that the only way forward is together. No one can be left behind. We will have to find a way forward together. There is no other way to get where we want to go. And because my faith is based in truth and clarity, I can trust that faith when it informs me that eventually, we will figure it out.

How compassion is protective . . .

To love a child, to parent them, is to walk around with the terror of loss just beneath your skin. Most of us manage it well, letting them climb trees and go on air planes and drive in cars.

But, be careful not to manage it so well that you cannot find it in an instant. Let the risk of being alive, and loving, be something you can access with each breath.

I don’t want us to have to see our child in another in order to feel for them. I don’t want us to have to imagine our own excruciating scream to be motivated to act. We do not need to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Our love, our terror, our intimacy with the risk- that should be enough. We should recognize it in the hand that cradles, in eyes of shock, and soft curve of a jaw line passed through generations and tended in growth of all stages. We shouldn’t need to feel our own world destroyed to be moved. We do not need to do that. That is not empathy. Empathy is to feel ANOTHER’s feelings in your body as you feel your own. To feel the emotion in OUR collective body. This feeling your own feelings about someone else’s situation is something different than empathy. It has a place, an important place in your process. But it’s essential to separate the two. Because if we are not careful, entangling our own experience about someone else’s emotions can lead to the codependent empathy cycle rather than the compassion circuit.

The codependent empathy cycle leads to more separation, exhaustion, overwhelm and fear.

The compassion circuit nourishes us with energy for action, mends separation, offers clarity and courage.

Cultivating the capacity of our individual compassion circuits is protective.  The more bonded we are to each other, the less harm we will allow. The more solutions we will find. The more potent we can be.

We can barely imagine what would be possible, we have to go there to find out. We must cultivate those hearts to know their wisdom. To know that future.

Compassion or Codependence?

Compassion is a circuit within us. When we fulfill the compassion circuit, we have energy. In a state of compassion we can think with clarity and focus and have capacity for relevant action. It’s not just for extreme situations, this circuit is for every day living.

Empathy is the sensation that initiates the circuit ( empathy is feeling for another this means joy, anger, confusion - not only pain). Empathy has two pathways, it can move along the compassion circuit or along a codependency circuit. The codependency circuit runs more like a treadmill. It requires energy, depleting our reserves and impeding our ability to think and feel clearly. From this place our actions rarely address authentic needs but instead aim to control various situations and scenarios (usually, not joyfully).

In a state of compassion it’s hard to separate us from each other, in a state of codependence it’s rather easy. In a state of compassion we have access to our fullness and the full experience of life, aware of the inherent risks. In a state of codependency we are always seeking a sense of complete safety that does not exist.

When we experience sensations of codependent empathetic activation, we might feel a prompting to hurry towards a solution or to “finish” a feeling. We may be distracted and feel a lack of presence. Maybe we become overly focused on a problem or we bypass the problem entirely. Whatever the case there is a sense of anxiety beneath our actions.

One simple way to disrupt this process and rejoin the compassion circuit is to take a moment between tasks. A literal breath, maybe place your hand on your heart. Take a breath and say clearly to yourself what task you are setting down and which you are picking up. This little moment allows your breath, body, and mind an opportunity to realign. The more our breath, body, and mind remain interwoven, the greater our ability to stay on the compassion circuit. This circuit organically supports our individual and collective wellbeing.