But now we have a shiny new food processor, the one that whipped up my potatoes, processed the tomato sauce I'll tell you about in a bit, and in the future may even provide black bean burgers, hummus, or pesto. So the other night it occurred to us to finally take out those yogurt cubes and blend them with the extra goo from a kind of failed fruit leather attempt (it didn't dry evenly; it's too crispy on the edges and too soft in the middle, still tastes good but it's just not right). I don't have pictures of any of this, it was just too exciting to stop and get the camera. In our eagerness, we did probably almost break the food processor, since the yogurt cubes were pretty big and, well, frozen. And we didn't consider that since they lived in the freezer for such a long time, they might just taste like it. The other things that have been living in the freezer for a while include a few bags of scraps ready for compost, which I haven't gotten around to dropping off at the farmers' market (how unproductive of me!), an opened box of soft pretzel bites, and some sliced bananas that maybe a while ago we were planning on using for something. Who knows.
So the other night we enjoyed strawberry banana frozen yogurt with chocolate syrup drizzled on top, and aside from the slight freezer taste, it was excellent. Now we have a new rule about always having frozen yogurt forever. The new rule also stipulates that the yogurt must not be frozen for more than two or three weeks, and that it could perhaps sometimes be vanilla flavored, for a little extra sweetness, and maybe the cubes should be a little smaller next time, and we should take them out of the freezer about fifteen minutes before we plan to blend it all up, so that nothing gets broken.
Because if my food processor is broken, how will I ever make tomato sauce the right consistency for dehydrating into Tomato Sauce Leather?
You may be able to tell from the pictures that this is one of the messier projects I've been working on lately. I added a can of whole peeled tomatoes to my sauce (here is the recipe that inspired me, but I used one can whole and one can crushed), and as I "shredded" them with my fingers, as instructed, juices and seeds spurted across the kitchen, all over the stove and behind it, and of course all over me. Then, as it began to heat up, a giant sauce bubble exploded and burned my hand, and the smaller bubbles were splashing onto everything within a three foot radius. It was terrible. The simmering sauce was destroying my kitchen. I needed to construct something to protect the stove and innocent bystanders:
So innovative, I know. Anyway it's way less expensive than something like this, and though it isn't as cute, I think it was probably more effective than these, since the point is for more steam to escape, rather than collect and condense on the lid. Surely all the kitchens of yore must have had some sort of apparatus for guarding against splatters, but not even an apparatus, just a cylinder, or something more cone shaped, sloping outwards, tall and wide to catch all the debris from bubble explosions great and small. But all of my different searches online turned up the screens or the lid holders, no cylinders. "Sauce guard," "pot protector," "splatter guard," everything. I was on my own.
Speaking of the kitchens of yore, isn't your grandmother supposed to teach you how to make sauce? I guess she would if you asked her, I mean, she wouldn't force you, and maybe it's just if you're Italian, which I'm not. But I have lived with an Italian for several years now. He has not taught me how to make sauce, but he did offer some helpful tips: dump in a bunch of water, then simmer your sauce forever, or until it reaches your desired thickness. On the topic of adding sugar, he shrugged his shoulders. When I asked him to have a taste and judge the salt content, he said, "You put carrots and celery? Huh." It needed more salt.
Did my sauce even compare to that of his childhood? Would the grandmothers approve? Shrug. I did add a little raw sugar, but I don't think that my taste is refined enough to tell the difference. All I know is that I thought the sauce was damn good. I would totally eat it on my pasta all the time, which is what we're going to do on the trail, since I dehydrated all of it. I really want to share my recipe, but again, it does not involve very precise measurements, and I can't figure out how to make it a link that you click on, so that it's not taking up space in this post. Oh, this complicated blogging stuff! Maybe I say something like, leave a comment if you'd like the recipe? I should be encouraging people besides my mom to leave comments, shouldn't I? Someday I'll figure this out...
And I take back all of the mean stuff I said about the internet (well, some of it, anyway). The internet is a great resource for finding out whether or not you should add sugar to your sauce, and of course for finding a sauce recipe in the first place, if you don't have an Italian grandmother and your live-in Italian wants you to figure it out for yourself. Like the other night when I made beef stroganoff, yelling the whole time, "This is all wrong! You have to help me! I need you to cut my mushrooms! I have no idea what I'm doing!" He just reassured me that I was probably doing fine, and he wouldn't cut up my mushrooms because he had been cutting stuff up at work all day. When I finally got everything simmering in the broth, I realized I hadn't even started the water for the egg noodles. What a disaster!
But that's the point. It was somewhat of a disaster, but eventually I got it all together and it came out great (I used way less sour cream than that recipe calls for). Now I have the experience of beef stroganoff stored in my head and in my hands, which means next time I'll glance at a recipe to remind myself of the basics, but now I know what consistency to shoot for with the sauce, and what the meat looks like when it's done, and that my knife skills are not so good, so I need to prep all my vegetables before starting to saute anything. Frantically chopping mushrooms while the onions turn brown is dangerous. You should probably never be frantically doing anything with a giant chef's knife.
So with the help of the internet, and the help (by not helping) of my fiance who has always done most of the cooking, I was able to make a kick-ass meal and some kick ass sauce. I guess I just have to use the internet sparingly, and combine it with my own knowledge and experience to make kick-ass stuff. It's basically the same as looking through your grandmother's recipe box, it just doesn't have that personal touch. You're still going to alter the recipe to your own specifications, and you're still going to screw up once in a while. And when you have a problem that neither the internet or the grandmas have a solution for, you're going to have to just use your head:
Which I think I'm pretty good at. If I do say so myself.