Peanut Free Product Shout Out: Nonna Lena's Nut Free Pesto

Prepared pesto is one of those great convenience foods. But with a peanut allergy (and our avoidance of tree nuts as a precaution) pesto, unless it's homemade, is off limits.

Until now.

I shop at Piazza's in Palo Alto, CA at least 3x a week for my lunch and for perishable groceries for dinner (veggies, bread, etc.). I was buying fresh pasta one day and thought I'd take a look at the prepared pestos to see if any were safe. Lo and behold, I found one.

I present to you: Nonna Lena's All Natural Pesto.
Ingredients: Organic Basil, Olive Oil, Fresh Garlic, Fresh Creamy Butter, Parmesan Cheese.

I took it home and tossed it with some fresh fettuccine noodles. It is so delicious - not too garlicky, just enough basil. It's basically pesto without pine nuts. It's a little on the buttery side - or maybe I should say olive oily side - so if you wanted to use it on crostini, for instance, you would have to let it sit for a little bit at room temperature so it can soften a bit.

So for Bella's lunch tomorrow, she's getting some penne pasta with pesto and veggies. All I needed to do was cook the pasta and add the pesto - it says right on the label that no heating is necessary. Nonna Lena (if she exists) is a woman after my own heart.

Maybe you can find it where you live? Looks like they have distributors in California, Washington, and Oregon.

p.s. After looking through the site, I noticed that some of her other sauces have walnuts and/or pine nuts in them. This falls in my safety zone - Bella's doctor has ok'd "may contain" or "manufactured on equipment" when it comes to tree nuts due to her negative RAST and skin tests. We've chosen to avoid actual ingestion of whole tree nuts for the time being due to cross contamination/confusion for Bella issues.