Tasty Tortillas

30 Aug 2012 12 Comments

by Natalie in Cooking/Attempting to Cook, Failed Housewife Tags: , ,

I refuse to buy any more cheap tortillas – even if they are only .88 cents at the local grocery store.

No matter how long I microwave them or how slowly I try to peel them apart, I end up either shredding them to bits or wearing them to paper-thin thickness in the center.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t eat a juicy taco on a paper-thin tortilla. And heaven knows my little boys can’t.

I should just stop at Costco and get the jumbo pack of quality tortillas for less than $5. But I haven’t dared brave that store since the arrival of our newest baby.

So a couple weeks ago I tried my hand at making homemade tortillas. My boys and I were craving cheesy quesadillas after church on Sunday but we only had a couple of store bought tortillas left. (Why I thought to do this right after church when we all were starving is beyond me.)

Anyway, I found a super easy 5-ingredient recipe here here.

After mixing the stuff together and letting the dough sit for half an hour, I was ready to roll.


I am definitely not a pro at using the rolling pin. Most of the tortillas ended up looking anything but round. I actually think the shapes got weirder with each tortilla. But no matter the shape, they all taste the same, right?

My oldest son helped me roll the dough into balls. Here’s what my table looked like when he was done.

My husband came home just after I finished toasting the last tortilla. I think he ate 1/3 of the batch right then. That meant either they were really good or he was really hungry.

It turned out to be so easy that I thought I’d share the recipe. If I can do it, ANYONE can.

Now I don’t know that I’ll make them all the time, and I’m definitely not ready yet for a job at Costa Vida, but it was really nice to have a success in the kitchen for a change.

Cooking up disaster

10 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by Natalie in Failed Housewife Tags: ,

Growing up I had a serious eating complex. Food was my enemy. I ate merely to survive, not enjoy. So needless to say, I didn’t invest a lot of time in developing killer cooking skills. When I got married, I was literally starting from scratch and I still consider myself an amateur chef.

And I have a lot of amateur-chef stories to back me up.

Like the fall I experienced a number of canning disasters. Not only did I manage to blow up a bottle of spaghetti sauce splattering tomatoes all over my parents’ back patio (apparently my dad’s camp chef cooks about 100 times hotter than an indoor stove) but I melted my mom’s juicing hose trying to bottle grape juice and burned one of my favorite kitchen towels. It was hand-painted with a cute little girl on it and the words “Tuesdays I just cry” below her.

Ironically that happened on a Tuesday and I felt like crying.

I think of that towel every time I have a cooking disaster, which happens more than I like to admit. Like last Sunday when I tried to make dinner rolls and brownies.

I’ve had a 25-pound bag of flour in my pantry for about three months that I need to get rid of and I’ve been anxious to try my friend’s new “easy” roll recipe. However, we used all of our eggs at lunch and because it was the Sabbath I decided not to go buy a dozen but use an egg-substitute recipe.

I started with the brownies. I checked the egg recipe – but unfortunately I didn’t read it all the way through. Needless to say, 25 minutes later I had successfully made brownie oil surprise aka brown bubbling goo.

Luckily, I flipped my recipe card over before starting on the rolls. I followed the egg-substitute recipe to a T, but the rolls weren’t rising.

Now I have to admit I can make a mean chicken pasta salad and delicious sugar cookies, but those are only two things on a very short list of foods I have managed to successfully make more than once.

I have never handmade a delicious batch of dinner rolls. And I’ve wanted to. So I started to panic. It was 6 p.m. and I was seriously craving my rolls. Especially after I knew the brownies were inedible.

I think I checked under the towel a dozen times to see if they had grown. I decided to relax a little and help get the boys in bed. To my surprise the egg substitute kicked in and they actually turned out okay, despite the fact that I underestimated the rising time and didn’t get to enjoy a warm roll until about 9:45 p.m.

Now I know what you are thinking, “no wonder her kids don’t eat well.”  I know I’m no Rachael Ray or Paula Dean but maybe if I keep trying I’ll be able to add to my list of repeated successes.

I actually enjoy cooking now, even if it occasionally ends in disaster. When that happens I simply laugh it off and head to Wendy’s. Unless it’s Sunday, then I end up serving cereal.

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