Past Pesto and Peas

I completed my first mission for the Barefoot Bloggers. It was Ina Garten's pasta, pesto, and peas. I would have to say that overall I really enjoyed this dish (Chris absolutely loved it as is) but I would have made a few more changes than I already did.
What changes were those? Well, I am glad that I read the comments about this recipe that said to cut back the mayo. The recipe calls for 1 1/4 cups of mayo! Really! Holy clogged arteries Ina! I only used 1/4 of a cup of mayo and that seemed to work out just fine. I also used an extra tablespoon of lemon juice just to give the sauce a little bit more edge. What I would have like to have done would be to add more garlic to the mix but, alas, my poor little blender choose that moment to die on me (you served me well) so no extra garlic this time. I did have to use canned pesto for this but that wasn't a bad thing. I haven't grown enough basil yet to make that much pesto and have you SEEN how much the grocery stores charge for a little thing of basil? If I would have bought basil to make 1 1/2 cups of pesto that would have used my grocery money for the week. $3.50 for a little box of basil that grows like a weed in my back yard? Oh well, I guess we all gotta make a buck somehow.

Oh, and when you make it unless you are going to a picnic or having guests over you may want to halve the recipe. I did not read the part where it says that this recipe serves 12 and while Chris and I eat a lot (okay, I eat a lot) we still have 4 large containers of it leftover for lunches (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). I will definitely be making this dish again but with a lot more garlic.

p.s.
I had a bunch of great pictures of this dish and the whole process of making it. Last night when I was clearing out my camera I had all the different files made for the different pictures (pics of friend's weddings, Las Vegas pictures, the nieces doing Tae-Kwon-Do, etc. . ) and I thought "Well I've already upload all the food pics so I can just delete those,". Well, you can guess the expletives that went through my mind as I hit the delete button then remembered that this post was coming up today. Yeah, not the smartest thing I've ever done.

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