Hey Pesto!

Simple ideas, easy meals. I’m always on the look out for different meal ideas, and some time ago was rummaging through the products on offer at the local Aldi when I came across pesto. What, I wondered, was this? The instruction list said simply “stir through cooked pasta”. It didn’t sound too demanding, which gave reassurance: it’s not easy to get “cooked pasta” wrong.

And so was added an unpretentious and easy meal to the admittedly short list of lunch alternatives. At the time, Aldi were the only supermarket I knew that sold the little jars of pesto for 99p, and the only one with such a wide variety. Unfortunately, the pistachio and fennel variety has vanished from the shelves, and other retailers have belatedly cottoned on to pesto, but Aldi still gets my custom.

A word of warning, though: don’t eat too much of the stuff at one time, unless you don’t pay any attention to salt and fat limits. They’re not called guilty pleasures for nothing.