Vegan Pesto Pasta

Spring is here, tentatively — Oak Lawn in late March is still cold in the morning but the afternoons have turned. The crabapple tree in the backyard started doing its thing, the little pink flowers that last exactly two weeks and then blow away in a single windy afternoon. I have been taking walks after dinner, which I did not do all winter, just around the neighborhood in the long evening light, thinking about what comes next. May 15th. August. September and the first day of school. The shape of the year ahead.

I went through the CPS teacher onboarding paperwork this week and there was a form about classroom supplies. First-year teachers in this district receive a forty-dollar budget for classroom supplies. Forty dollars. I have been stocking up on clearance school supplies at Target since January. I have a bin in the hallway of the house with dry erase markers, colored pencils, sticky notes, a pointer, two timers. This is not sustainable as a long-term strategy but it is a start.

Blog post this week about the forty-dollar classroom budget — it got picked up by a teacher Facebook group and shared several hundred times. Teachers in the comments: "That's generous actually." Teachers who had gotten ten dollars. Teachers who got nothing. I wrote back to as many as I could. I said: here is where I shop for clearance supplies. Here is how I stretch forty dollars to look like a hundred. The blog is becoming something specific — a resource for people in the same margins I am in. That is on purpose now.

Made spaghetti aglio e olio this week — the classic: spaghetti, olive oil, lots of garlic, red pepper flakes, parsley. That's everything. I used a full head of garlic, sliced thin, cooked in olive oil until golden, pulled from the heat before they burned, tossed everything together with pasta water. Under a dollar fifty for a bowl that tasted luxurious. The garlic smell stayed in Patty's kitchen for two days. She said "You used a lot of garlic." I said yes. She said "It was good though." Exactly.

The aglio e olio got me thinking about all the pasta dinners that prove a point without trying to — the ones where the ingredient list is almost embarrassingly short and the result is something you’d order at a restaurant without blinking. This vegan pesto pasta operates on the same logic: fresh basil, garlic, good olive oil, a handful of nuts, and pasta water doing the heavy lifting. If you’re already living in the margins and feeding yourself on a real budget, this is the kind of recipe that belongs in permanent rotation.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 22 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

12 oz spaghetti or pasta of choice
2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup walnuts or pine nuts
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more to taste
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more for pasta water
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup reserved pasta water
Optional: cherry tomatoes or red pepper flakes to serve

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Before draining, reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water. Drain and set aside.
Make the pesto. While the pasta cooks, combine basil, garlic, walnuts, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in a food processor or blender. Pulse several times to break everything down, then stream in the olive oil with the motor running until a thick, slightly textured sauce forms. Taste and adjust salt.
Thin if needed. If the pesto is very thick, stir in 1–2 tablespoons of the reserved pasta water until it reaches a loose, saucy consistency.
Toss and coat. Add the drained pasta to a large bowl or back into the pot off the heat. Spoon in the pesto and toss to coat, adding reserved pasta water a splash at a time until the sauce clings evenly to every strand.
Serve. Divide into bowls and top with red pepper flakes, extra basil, or halved cherry tomatoes if using. Eat immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Vegan Pesto Pasta — When a Five-Ingredient Bowl Earns a Two-Day Compliment