Sequestration Meal #384

 

My latest YouTube rabbit hole, whilst I hunker down avoiding people, has been budget cooking. One of the channels I have watched a lot of makes frequent use of corn tortillas and refried beans. This is one of the things its creator seems to eat on a regular basis: A tostada.

Of course, I adore tostadas, but I don't think I had ever made one or even considered it. They're messy to eat, and usually I would want chips instead, to avoid the attempt at either cutting it up and spilling it when the base cracks, or getting toppings all over my nose when I give up and pick up the whole thing to eat like some sort of pizza. Tostadas were, I guess, child-appropriate food in a way. They don't make me feel grown up or sophisticated when I try to eat them. But all of that makes them the perfect option for a meal at home alone. No one need judge me for my sour cream-covered nose. Plus, unlike having nachos, this is a much higher topping-to-base ratio. Nachos are about the chips. Tostadas are like tacos with too much stuff in them to have been folded.

My tostada was supposed to be topped with homemade salsa, but the grocery store had no jalapenos, and no acceptable substitutes. It's fine. We can roll with that. 

(The grocery store, by the way, was an adventure I do not care to repeat quickly. I bought enough for lasting a month--you can follow this saga here if you like to find out if I make it that long again--and have made rough plans to ensure I'm still eating produce by the end of January and not just stuff in cans or the freezer (even though that's fine for some meals and it may still happen). I'm pretty concerned, though, by how much disregard people have for public health measures these days. I wore an N95 mask and went at 6:00AM to avoid as many people as possible, but I still encountered unmasked folks quite a bit. But by now if I was going to get COVID from my grocery trip I would have it, so I'll just try not to be too disturbed by having to work in person at the library 90% of the time or more. At least there people try a little harder to wear their masks.)

I made my own tostada shells by frying corn tortillas; you can bake them, but I wanted mine to be perfectly crispy and baking them makes them crispier on the outsides than inside. I spread the fried tostada shell with refried black beans, then topped it with taco-flavored TVP crumbles, non-dairy cheddar shreds (Violife), romaine lettuce, tomato, red onion, avocado, non-dairy sour cream (Tofutti), and fresh cilantro. I didn't really even miss the salsa I was going to make; this was delicious. And after my last few weeks of sturdy produce, frozen things, and shelf-stable staples, getting some crispy lettuce and fresh herbs in was so nice. Because they taste better made one at a time, I only photographed one, but I had two of this size.

This is gluten free and nut free, incidentally, and would be soy free if you left off the TVP and Tofutti, if you're looking for allergy friendly options. Without the TVP and Tofutti, I would suggest adding more beans--maybe putting some chili beans on top of the refried beans, for example--and making guacamole with lime to substitute for the sour cream, maybe squeezing a bit of lime all over everything.