One upon a time, a vegetarian blogger couple caught our eye with their healthy and vibrant cooking. A few cookbooks later and Green Kitchen Stories’ nourishing recipes and beautiful photography still thrill us – and our readers (you saw these overnight oats, right?).

Their latest cookbook, Green Kitchen At Home, is a stunning recipe collection full of  useful, fresh, inventive and colorful recipes like this seasonal spring veggie bowl with a few surprising ingredients to punch things up… 

Obviously, nourishing bowls like these can contain a wild mix of ingredients, but we try to make sure that we cover different ingredient types – a protein source or grain, healthy fats, baked veggies, raw veggies and raw fruit, leafy greens, dipping sauces and crunchy toppings – for a delicious and well-balanced bowl. As seasons, produce and availability vary between countries, don’t feel you have to follow the recipes to the letter, but instead use them as a template and freestyle with the best vegetables and fruit you can find.

For us, pesto is more than just a dressing for pasta. It’s a shortcut flavoring option for numerous meals. It can be used on top of a flatbread pizza instead of tomato sauce, mashed with avocado to add flavor and creaminess to a pasta salad, used as a flavor boost on top of frittata muffins or whisked up with oil and lemon to make a salad dressing.

Below is our standard, basic pesto recipe, just like Luise’s Italian nonna makes it. You can use a store-bought option, of course, but homemade always tastes better. We also make a vegan version with nutritional yeast and cashew nuts to keep it creamy instead of the cheese (see tips). The nutritional yeast adds that cheesy flavor, making the two versions very similar.

If you feel like playing around with this recipe, you can add kale, spinach, rocket or even raw broccoli to the herbs. The pine nuts can be substituted with other nuts, and you can even try adding sweet fruit, like mango or raisins, for an interesting flavor twist.