The Pine Nut Monopoly

I have made an important discovery that I just wanted to take the time to share with all five (?) of you:

In my efforts to satisfy my craving of Costco pesto in the absence of accessibility to Costco, I decided to embark on a mission of making my very own Costco pesto. I of course did a quick Google search and found a nice AI summary recipe. So, I gather all of the ingredients (basil x 2 because apparently basil goes bad quicker than Taylor Swift releasing a new album - are you supposed to refrigerate fresh basil???) but decide to make the economical decision of purchasing sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. Pine nuts are expensive, ok? The internet also told me sunflower seeds would be ok (thank you Reddit), plus Costco pesto uses sunflower oil in addition to EVOO so I'm really just killing two birds with one stone. Don't worry, I made sure to buy unsalted sunflower seeds so as not to mess with the flavor profile too much! I also bought blocks of cheese instead of pre-grated cheese because I figured the cheese would get pretty grated in the blender. However, I didn't anticipate the challenge of measuring a 1/4 cup of grated cheese-worth of a block of cheese...I also generated the recipe in two separate Google searches, one of which listed lemon juice as an ingredient and one of which did not. The fact that my recipe was therefore non-replicable (apparently "irreplicable"is not a word...the more ya know..) is not the best sign...but the actual Costco pesto label lists citric acid as an ingredient so lemon juice seemed necessary.

Anywho, I eyeballed the cheese and pretty much everything else, used my basil before it had the nerve to go bad on me, used my regular-amount-of-virgin-olive oil, and graciously added my unsalted sunflower seeds into the mix. And what do ya know? I got me some pesto!!!

I will say, it does not quite look or taste or smell exactly like Costco's infamous pesto, but at this point I wasn't really expecting that. But I will say, it tastes pretty darn good and definitely classifies as pesto. Most importantly, this little experiment proves that pine nuts have an unfair monopoly over the pesto industry. I'm sure any nut (or seed?) would suffice. Except for maybe caraway seeds...I don't really remember what these taste like but I have a very vague memory in which they were pretty poignant. If I do more experimenting I'll be sure to let you all know. You're welcome in advance!