Bye Bye to Convenience...

Once again, I've learned to make something on my own and now the pre-packaged ones are ruined for me. Our easy dinner of (packaged) tortillas, (pre-made) beans and cheese burritos has will now be a little less easy. But alot more delicious.

Last night I made tortillas. yum. I used the recipe from the Rebar cookbook, which I am still loving alot. The only modifications I made were to use 5 tbs unsalted butter instead of vegetable shortening, to make the dough in the food processor and to cook them in my cast-iron skillet with no oil (recipe calls for oiling the frying pan). I also used all white flour, because I was out of whole wheat. We had some friends over to celebrate Andrew's 40th birthday, which is tomorrow. I made a platter of stuff to put in the tortillas: shredded chicken, steamed asparagus, carrots and red bell pepper and made an citrus-soy sauce dressing to top it all off. It was really good, although the tortillas definitely stole the show; everything else was just there because I couldn't really put out only tortillas for dinner and because we all need a little bit of protein.

Tortillas (slightly modified from Rebar Cookbook):

ingredients:

1 1/2 c. unbleached flour

1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1 tsp. white sugar

1 1/2 baking powder

1 tsp. salt

5 tbsp. unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 10 pieces

3/4 c. hot water

1. Mix first five ingredients in bowl of food processor. Add butter and process until little pea-sized balls form.

2. Gradually add hot water through feed tube while processing.

3. Turn out dough onto floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Form into ball and place in clean bowl, cover and set aside for an hour.

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and sprinkle with flour. Break off golf ball sized pieces of dough, roll into balls (I made 10) and place on baking sheet. Cover and set aside for another hour.

5. On a floured surface, press out each ball and roll out disk to form an approximate 8" round (mine were pretty irregularly "round"). Put each tortilla on a piece of parchment paper and stack them up.

6. Heat cast iron skillet to medium-high and cook tortillas one by one. Flip over when bubbles form. I cooked each one for about a minute per side. I wrapped them in foil and kept them in a 200 degree oven until it was time to eat.

This morning we went and bought Andrew a plug-in drill for his birthday, which is a perfect present that Ezra came up with by himself. One rainy day, a few months ago, he was sitting in the living room looking out the window for awhile. Then, he got up, came into the kitchen and told me that he'd just thought of what we should get Papa for his birthday. It's something only Ezra would know that Andrew needs, as they do woodwork and house repairs together, and Ezra said that Andrew is always frustrated by the rechargeable drill losing it's charge so quickly.

Comments

[Lisa]

Thanks, Laura! I also want to try corn - let me know if you make them.

[laura]

Firstly, I love the photo of your boys! So big now!

I started tortillas from scratch this year, and I still need to try corn ones! I know what you mean about not being able to go back to those handy pre-packaged ones!

[Lisa]

Hi Michelle! Thanks. It was really sweet. Hope to see you soon!

[Michelle]

That is so incredibly sweet of Ezra to notice such a thing...and a wonderfully birthday gift story.