Arugula pesto pizza with roasted tomatoes

See those arugula leaves up there on my blog banner? Yeah. That was four weeks ago, before my sweet, demure little seedlings turned into bushy green monsters. Four weeks of unseasonable warmth, and arugula casts aside its cooperative, leaf-growing ways and sends up a spindly stalk of flower buds. This is my second year growing arugula, and by now I know: it's time to make pesto.

Arugula pesto. This recipe calls for four packed cups, enough to justify pulling the offending plants up by their heads and plucking them clean.

In this sort of weather, it takes very long to go from holding tender little leaves in your grateful little hands to pacing in front of the cold frame thinking, Bejebus! What am I going to do with all this stuff?

A quick rinse and a whirl in the food processor with pistachios, lemon, cheese, and a drizzle of oil, and it's pesto, folks. Perfectly delicious on pasta, but eating it on pizza with roasted tomatoes is our preferred way.

And our cold frame is safe from burgeoning arugula plants again. For now...