Potato Tacos

For some reason I thought I already posted this recipe.  I'm assuming I had planned to back when my life was absorbed with studying and never got around to it.  While looking through my posts to make sure it wasn't a repeat, I noticed we eat a lot of Mexican food.  Not real Mexican food, but our strange version of it.  It is so easy to turn vegan and it is generally inexpensive so that meets our main food criteria.  Plus we really like it.  So here's another one.

This recipe comes with a free tip that I learned from the always useful Internet.  Aldi's sells jalapenos in a bag of about 6-8.  This always seems like a great deal to me and I can't help myself from buying the bag instead of the one jalapeno that I actually need.  Then, of course, at the end of the week I'm left looking at a mostly full bag of jalapenos just waiting to go bad.  My solution is to mince and freeze them.  This is obviously a good idea but leads to terrible, burning hands caused by chopping way too many hot peppers at once.  Usually I was my hands, wait a little bit, and I'm fine.  The last time though, I was a mess.  The pain was actually getting more and more intense.  Out of desperation, I had Kayleigh type "how to stop hands burning from jalapenos" into Google and she came up with the crazy solution was washing your hands in cold water and mustard.  This seemed very weird to say the least but I was desperate so I squirted some plain old mustard into my hands and washed them.  I kid you not, the burning stopped immediately.  Amazing.  I also smelled like hot dogs all day!

I adapted a recipe from "Color Me Vegan" by Colleen  Patrick-Goudreau.  Several year's ago I received this as a birthday present and we spent weeks trying recipes from it.  It got to the point where we'd be checking out at the grocery store and Bill would say something like "So I guess we are doing purple this week?"!

Potato Tacos

2 cups sweet potatoes (1 inch dice)

2 cups Yukon gold potatoes (1 inch dice)

1 cup onion, diced

2 red bell peppers, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

1 clove garlic

2-4 tablespoons vegetable broth (or water)

Salt & pepper

Hard shell tortillas

Toppings such as salsa, guacamole, cilantro, etc. (doesn't really need any toppings in my opinion)

Using a steamer, steam both kinds of potatoes until soft but still holding their shape (10=15 minutes).  In a large skillet, add 1 tablespoon broth and saute the onion and peppers until soft.  Add additional broth as needed. This takes about 10 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook one additional minute.  Add the potatoes to the skillet and season with salt and pepper.  Cook until all ingredients are well blended.  Slightly mash the mixture so that it somewhat sticks together (to make an easier taco  filling).  Place into taco shells and top with your chosen toppings.

Steamed

Sauteed

Mashed