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Experimenting in the Kitchen: How we Made Pesto!


Hello everyone!

This week we decided to experiment a little bit and make another sauce that we have been wanting to prepare a dish with.  We have always had basil on hand for our Caprese bagel sandwich and for the tomato sunrise.  These have been staples at our shop dating back to the 80 W Michigan days.  We almost always had an issue with some of it always going back and being thrown away.  We had always toyed around with the idea of making a home made pesto but we usually try to have multiple uses for food items that we buy and offer.  At that point we did not have any kind of nut to put into the pesto so we didn’t want to buy a product simply for a sauce we would use on one or two items.  Enter fall and our Cider Mill Waffles.  These came with cranberries, apples, bacon, condensed milk, and walnuts.  With these walnuts we then had all of the pieces to make up a delicious pesto!

I had never made pesto before but I knew the basic ingredients list and decided one day at shop to go live on instagram and make pesto!  It's a simple process, take a food processor, fill it up with basil leaves, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper.  Then you blend it all up and presto chango you’ve got some pesto! I have to admit, for never making pesto or even really having a recipe it turned out well.  We then decided to take that and make a chicken pesto wrap out of it.  The initial results have been positive, people seem to like it and they keep ordering it so we placed it on the seasonal menu for people to keep trying out. 

This is how we utilize the seasonal menu/specials board.  We experiment with new items and see how people like them, if people like the item enough we keep it and throw it on the real menu.  If the item doesn’t turn out to be as popular as we had hoped we just let it fall off and we continue with a new product.  This stage is one of our favorite parts of cooking and having a food menu. We love to experiment with new food and they’re successful just about as often as they aren’t.  We will keep experimenting and continue to have new and fun items available for everyone to try! 

If y’all have any suggestions or ideas don’t hesitate to let us know!

Until next time,