I recently had the pleasure of visiting Farmed Here‘s vertical farm – a magical place sprouting with delicious basil and arugula. Their indoor aquaponic and aeroponic growing systems are extremely innovative and I feel truly are the future of farming.

The trip left me craving more basil, especially their delicious Sweet Basil variety. And what better way to honor basil than to make it into pesto. When life gives you basil, make pesto?? For the best pesto recipe, I went to my biggest (and best) cooking influence: my Mom. I tweaked her tried and true recipe just a bit to make it vegan, substituting nutritional yeast for Parmesan cheese and adding in the juice of a lemon to freshen it up and counteract the yeasty taste.

Next on my list is to make this recipe using Farmed Here’s Lemon Basil, which has the most amazing and bright lemon flavor.

Vegan Sweet Basil Pesto

Farmed Here’s box actually keeps the basil extra-fresh. I used it as a house for my jar of pesto.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• juice of one lemon
• 2 tablespoon pepitas, toasted
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1 clove garlic, crushed

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in food processor and process until smooth and consistent.

Tasted scrumptious on roasted cauliflower…