Making a Purple Basil Sauce (pesto?) from on-hand ingredients

At the first conway farmer's market of the season, we purchased a purple basil seedling. It was so petite and pretty. We separated it into 3 plants and potted them. One we gave away, the other two we set in sunny/shady spots. They have been doing wonderful!

Well, they started to flower and I realized I have not been harvesting. Therefore, this morning I pinched off the flowers, lower leaves and a couple of stems from both Purple Basil plants. I was not sure how to store them or what to do with them.

While looking up articles on storing fresh basil, I stumbled across a recipe for Purple Basil Pesto from this website I said hmph. I like pesto. I don't have that ingredient. I almost moved on. In fact, I did move on to another site, but then decided let's see what happens.

I created my own version of the above clickable recipe from ingredients that were already at home.

Ingredients:

pecans- freshly shelled (not roasted) about 3/4 cup

purple basil - freshly harvested (stems, leaves, flowers) (about 4 ounces)

2 cherry tomatoes - freshly picked perfectly ripe sweet 100 tomatoes

Grated Parmesan Cheese - the remainder of what was in container (6 tablespoons)

Garlic - 2 cloves (I couldn't taste it so I sprinkled on just a touch of Garlic Salt)

olive oil (for desired consistency-I used all of my olive oil and added canola oil)

Place all ingredients in food processor. I did not pre-cut or crush anything, you could if you want, but you don't have too. I scraped the sides a couple of times to make sure everything was good to go, I ended up pulling out one stem that refused to be a part of the party. When satisfied with your food processor's work. Add oil till pesto preference is achieved.

Enjoy! I am going to have mine on noodles and vegetables. I might even bake some on some chicken breast.

ps. If you don't have a food processor, you can chop all ingredients and use a mortar to mix.