First up on the foodie week series is Ashley from This City Girl sharing a yummy summer pasta recipe. We met back in February and I'm so excited to have her on the blog for the first time. 

***When Sarah asked me to guest blog on the fabulous Where the Sidewalk Begins , I was thrilled!  I love the blog and LOVE summer cooking.  It's just so easy to use fresh, local goods from the farmers market.  It makes the prep work so easy because everything already tastes so good!  So, here's my summer weeknight go-to: Arugula pesto spaghetti with slow roasted tomatoes and pine nuts.  

For the Pesto:
2 cups arugula
2-3 tablespoons olive oil 
1 or 2 cloves garlic (I love garlic)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
Lemon zest 
Italian parsley 
Salt & Pepper 

I pretty much throw all of these ingredients into the food processor and in a couple minutes you have a bright green pesto.  

For the Tomatoes: 
Preheat the oven to 300
Cut cherry tomatoes in halves 
Rub with a little olive oil and some sea salt 
Roast for about an hour or until the edges are caramelized, mixing a few times throughout the process
(you can make these in advance) 

Boil up your favorite brand of spaghetti, mix with the pesto, tomatoes and a hand full of pine nuts that have been toasted up in a pan and that's it! 

Though I'm not really one to follow recipes, I got my inspiration for the pesto from Giada and the tomatoes are from Gwyneth's My Father's Daughter. 

{images: My Father's Daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow (tomatoes & Gwyneth); The Blender - Williams-Sonoma blog}