Pineapple Chipotle Salsa & Salsa Verde -- Holy Mess (Temporary) Bachelor Edition

As some of you have read (and if you haven't, you should, at least this), my beloved wife is in la República Dominicana on a seminary cultural immersion trip. I am immensely happy for her on this occasion of spiritual and linguistic renewal, but I miss her very much.

However, her absence has created some opportunities: More comic book movies, for instance, have been playing in the new Saylor-Oliver Blu-ray player. I finished Avatar: The Last Airbender (thank you, Alex Moreschi and Benjamin Hart). I am on a Herculean reverse-chronological blitz through back episodes of Pop Culture Happy Hour (thank you, Randall Curtis; oh, and Holy Mess, meet Holy Geek). And I have been eating nothing but Mexican food, or what passes for Mexican food when I'm cooking it.

I'm not sure that this fact has yet become apparent on this blog, but my chief responsibility in our spousal-cooking-tag-team is sauces. So I've really been enjoying the food processor Kristin's mother bought us for Christmas (as opposed to the food processor my mother bought us for Christmas, which she graciously replaced with the Crock Pot also pictured below). I've had limited luck creating salsa recipes in the past, but I think I've now hit upon a couple good ones. So let me share them here, along with the unremarkable dishes I've used them in (my usual seared fish and sauteed cabbage bit was ruined by over-scrupulous observance of recommended cook times and unnecessary food processor techno-joy).

Pineapple Chipotle Salsa

• 12-15 pineapple-chunk-sized chunks fresh pineapple
• 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (a wonderful [to me] discovery)
• 3/4 of a large white onion
• 1 medium slicing tomato
• 1 medium jalapeño
• juice of 1/2 of a small lime
• 2 cloves garlic (I think I may have added more)
• cilantro, salt, pepper to taste (I also used a little chopped green pepper I had lying around)

 Process. Eat while cooking other food, and with it if there's any left.

The ingredients

How did we live without one of these?

The cabbage should have been sliced, not slawed

Really let down by the suggested cook times on the Trader Joe's
 swordfish steaks. Should have gone with my gut.

Looks better than it tastes, and that's saying something. The salsa
is dynamite, though, I swear.

Salsa Verde

• 4 medium tomatillos (my first time using these)
• 2 large jalapeños
• 1/2 of a large white onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• cilantro, salt, pepper to taste (I forgot lime juice, but you probably shouldn't)
• cayenne (or something else?) to taste if more heat desired (it was)

Cook other food. Process. Add to other food and eat immediately.

Delicious "slow cooker carnitas" from Give Me 

Some Oven (I used Newcastle)

Simple tacos with carnitas and salsa verde

Tomorrow: carnitas taco salad with one of the two salsas above. And several more episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

(How was I not obsessed with this show when I used to watch it in middle school? Darling, I hope you're game, because I'm not gonna be able to finish this one before you return.)