I hope everyone had a good stretch of the toes yesterday. The week is starting and some of us are still shaking off the magic dust from Sunday.

I usually take advantage of Sunday to prepare some of the foods that I will need in the upcoming days. Yesterday I prepared two kinds of pesto (parsley & cilantro) and a mayonnaise dressing you may want to use for carpaccio. I'll show you below.

I like to have nutritious, delicious dressings in the fridge because you can always count on them to give an extra kick to the quickest and simplest meals.

Below you can see on the left, a three ingredient salad we had for breakfast today. On the right, you'll find the brunch a prepared yesterday.

Simple foods, simple meals. A good dressing probably makes the difference.

For the parsley pesto:

• 100 grams of fresh parsley, without the thickest stems
• 150 ml of olive oil
• 50 grams of toasted cashew nuts
• 1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon of salt

To avoid having to wash my blender between preparations, I made the pesto first and then the mayonnaise.

...I took the sprigs of parsley first and discarded the thicker stems. I washed them very well, first soaking in water (with one drop of domestic bleach per liter) for 30 minutes and then rinsing with white vinegar solution (just a splash in the rinse water).

I ran the washed parsley through boiling water for 10 seconds and cooled it with water from the refrigerator. I chopped it with my hands, so the stems wouldn't get tangled in the blender blades.

I put all the ingredients into the blender...

...and let them blend until it became a thick mixture.

I put the pesto into a sterilized glass jar.

Time to Make the Cilantro Pesto :)

Ingredients for the cilantro pesto:

• 100 grams of fresh coriander, without the thickest stems
• 75 ml of olive oil
• 75 ml corn oil
• 80 grams of walnuts
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1 teaspoon salt

Just follow the same steps above. No need to wash the blender :D

As you can tell from the list of ingredients, this time I added corn oil and an extra tablespoon of lemon juice.

Finally, the Mayonaise Dressing :D

I wanted this mayonnaise to make sirloin carpaccio today, so I needed it to have a strong lemon and mustard flavor.

Ingredients for the mayonnaise dressing:

• 1 egg + 2 yolks (1/2 cup)
• 125 ml corn oil
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
• 4 tablespoons mustard
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Leftover pesto

Mayonnaise is super simple to make in a blender. Just put all the ingredients in it and let them blend until thick. Take them out of the blender immediately, as it sets up very quickly.

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I used these dressings for brunch; then closed my jars tightly and took them to the refrigerator.