Beautiful Applesa -- I Mean: Nope, Still Not Jealous of You

Dear Turkey,

Like you, I am experiencing an exotic adventure for the first time: staying home with a sick baby. So I'm not at work, I'm wearing a hoodie, and I'm not even starting the laundry or cleaning the house since I don't know what time we'll have to leave to go to the pediatrician (because sick babies wake up way earlier than doctors' offices). 

So I'm going to tell you about my adventure from Saturday: making applesauce. I make applesauce every year, usually twice. Once I use one kind of apples only and add a bunch of brown sugar and cinnamon. The other time I use four or five different varieties of apples and don't use any sugar (family secret, don't tell). That's what I did this time; I try to hit all the colors of skin and flesh (white and yellow). 

I don't peel the apples. I use one of those apple slicers, and then I use a paring knife to make sure I got all the hard parts from the core that sometimes sneak through.

I put the apples in pots with an inch or two of water at the bottom and brought them to a simmer on low heat -- be careful or they will stick and burn:

 I kept stirring them as they got soft, about 30 mins:

 Meanwhile I sterilized the jars; I used quart size:

 This is almost done; there are still some crunchy bits:

 After it was as cooked as I like (which is totally arbitrary), I packed the jars, leaving 1/8-1/4 inch headspace, and processed them for 30 mins. They all sealed within an hour:

The whole thing took about three hours from start to finish, thanks to the people who held my baby while I worked!

I moss you,

Tofu

Still Not Jealous of You

Dear Turkey,
While you are busy travelling the world, I was busy writing some Mo Willems fan fiction. No, I have never written fan fiction before (although I did just read 50 Shades of Grey...so if that fan fiction can get published, we should definitely be able to write a cookbook from this blog and get rich someday...), but Mo Willems is just so awesome. I currently have all of his books checked out from the library (I'm serious -- it's a big pile).
You will see why this is relevant to our blog, and you can guess who all the characters are, especially if you're familiar with the originals [hint: the pigeon doesn't usually have long hair]:
(Sadly the pictures are showing up a little light so I'm going to retype the captions.)



Don't Let My Wife Bake Anything...Pigeon Fan Fiction by Your Wife



"Hey honey, I think I'm going to go on a diet. So don't bake anything, okay?" ... "Never."

"Just one banana bread...Bananas are healthy you know!...Fat free!..Fine."

"?!?"..."I won't tell."

I moss you,
Tofu

I'm Not Jealous of You

Dear Turkey,
I hope you're having fun in Japan. I'm just writing to say that I'm not jealous of you. Not one little bit. I won't be jealous of you when you go to Italy or Costa Rica either.
I have a lot of places on my bucket list, and I'd still like to join the PeaceCorps someday, but I'm kind of surprised that I don't wake up every morning burning with envy about all of your cool experiences. I'm just that good at repressing it.
Seriously, though, I think it's a good sign that right now I don't want to be anywhere else besides my 800-square-foot house with my adorable little family (and plants).
Since I am doing my world travelling via palate only, I wanted to present our latest awesome Carribean Rotis (beta version 1.3). We first made something like this after eating Rotis at the Moosewood, when I was living in Ithaca (it was the day that I punctured my leg in a sledding accident, but that's another story).
Here's what we did this time:
1. Grated cheese.
2. Beans: two cans of Goya black beans drained and rinsed (or one big can, or soak some dried ones). First, sautee two shallots, two cloves of garlic, some oil, salt, lime juice, cumin, and a few T honey, then add the beans and cook five minutes.
3. Squash: roast 1/2 of a small butternut squash until tender. Mash with two boiled red potatoes (skin on, please), 4T butter, salt, and 6 oz cream cheese (why do you think this was so good?).
4. Onion and pepper sauce: sautee half of an onion and one half of a yellow pepper, diced, (you might want to double or triple this part for leftovers to warm up along with the leftover other stuff) in some oil, add enough molasses to coat, a few T brown sugar and lime juice, salt, pepper, cumin, chipotle powder, allspice, cloves, tumeric, maybe some curry powder (Dear Husband, if you ever read my blog, you can make a comment below about what you actually did, but I think I was something like that).
5. Mango salsa: dice one mango, add some red wine vinegar that you brought to a boil and dissolved some sugar in (then cooled), salt, lime juice, minced red onion, green onion, and serrano.
6. Cilantro (optional).
We usually put everything inside of a whole wheat tortilla (except the salsa) and bake it until the tortilla is nice and crispy, and then top with salsa and cilantro.
It's not Japan, but pretty exotic for a Sunday night after a nice ten mile run and with the sound of rain on the metal roof and a beautiful baby for entertainment:

the insides

the pots

the whole deal

 I moss you,
Tofu

Nachyo Averages Nachos

Dear Tofurkey,

Before I head of for the wilderness of a foreign land (because you know untamed Tokyo is...), I decided I must impart my nacho wisdom to you and all our adoring blog fans. These nachos alleviate ailments great and small. They cure loneliness, bolster spirits, and banish plague, leprosy, incontinence, impotence (these claims have not been evaluated by the FDA or any other agency and individual results may vary).

The secret to awesome nachos is to make the world's best sauces to go with them. Now, I cannot teach how to make the world's best guacamole. It's an innate spiritual thing. But I can give instructions, that with practice, will get you so close that the lay nacho-eater will probably not notice the difference.

Take a couple avocadoes and scoop them into a bowl. Add some very small dice red onion, at least the juice of one lime, lots of cilantro leaves, some diced jalapeno (fresh or pickled) and some salt and pepper. Mash it up. Taste it. If it's awesome, you're done. If it's not, dry your tears and add more of these ingredients until the balance = awesome.

I also made a tomatillo sauce for this that Angel and Jen couldn't stop raving about. In a baking dish, I put six halved tomatillos (sliced horizontally, not vertically), half a red onion, a serrano pepper, and a bulb of garlic. I roasted these forabout 30 minutes at 400. I added them to my awesome Vitamix blender (it will change your life [Vitamix, if you give one to Tofurkey, I bet we'll do whole posts about them and you'll make more money back in free advertising!]). I added a peeled lime, some cilantro leaves, some jalapenos, and some salt and pepper. Blend on high.

OK, but those are just the dressings. We also used some good red salsa and Greek yogurt in place sour cream. But come on! What about those awesome nachos, you ask? Well, as I explained, the sauces are half the battle and can be made ahead of time.

For the nachos, I put a couple bags of chips in the bottom of a baking dish. I try to use different color, organic chips made with different things. The two flavors and colors make the nachos beautiful and tasty. On top of this, I add ground beef or turkey cooked with seasoning. This, I know, will not be your thing, but I highly recommend it. You could substitute shrimp, maybe tofu (but I wouldn't; tofu is anti-nacho for me), or beans. I make my own seasoning which consists of lots of chili powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper with some cumin, oregano, and red pepper flakes. After the meat is cooked, I add a cup of water with this mix and a bit of potato starch. This works much better than the packets in the store and allows you to season however you like.

Once this has cooled and there's no liquid left, I put these on top of the chips. Then I sprinkle over it black beans and fajita onions and peppers. Now grate cheese (I like sharp cheddar but mixing cheeses is also good just take not: the awesomeness of nachos is in proportion to the amount of cheese) over top of this. Then sprinkle corn over this and put it in the over until the cheese melts. Pop the broiler on for just a bit if you like a crust.

When you take them out, they will look ready to eat but hold yourself back to add sliced olives. Use a spatula to put some on a plate and add fresh diced tomato and spinach or lettuce. Now add sauces and there you have it. Anti-sadness on a plate.

I tried to take a picture of the nachos still in a pan, but they are so good, I can't ever think of anything but eating them when they come out so I only have pictures of my plate and Angel's. If you're me, the chips in the pan are enough.

If you're Angel, and your boyfriend may not have preserved the crisp in every chip in the pan, you need extra chips, artfully arranged as gravestones in a nacho cemetery.

Use this recipe carefully. Side effects to anti-sadness, no-plague nachos may include weight gain and uncontrollable desire to make them again and again.

Love,

Turkey

Husband Rocks Weeknight Indian (Food)






Thank you, Husband 


Dear Turkey,
The other night I was holding my baby and I absentmindedly told my husband to make something for dinner using red potatoes, naan (sometimes I make my own but this was from Wegmans), onions, cukes, and tomatoes. In other words, all of things that were going to go bad that needed to be used up. Usually, this is my area of expertise, and my husband's area of expertise is using just enough of something so that the dish is perfectly flavored...leaving random amounts of things in the fridge...hence my area of expertise. In fact, if I was a congressperson, I would definitely be on the House Appropriations Committee, because my area of expertise is doling out exactly the right amounts of everything (be it portions, cookies, bananas, or shampoo) so that everything that is supposed to be used up by the end of the week is used up in its entirety.
Anyway, in just a few minutes this is what my husband whipped up:
1. Naan: baked in the oven on a preheated stone at 400 degrees for three minutes.
2. Red potatoes and onions: diced, cooked in a hot cast-iron pan with a little oil, chipotle chili powder (the spicy kind), tumeric, cumin, salt, and pepper, until crusty brown.
3. Raita: plain fat-free yogurt with tomato, cilantro, and cuke cut up in it, with cumin and salt.
4. Tamrind chutney: tamrind paste, honey, minced ginger.
I piled all of it up on my naan and ate with with a fork and knife. So good.
I moss you,
Tofu