Homemade Tortillas

What do you do when you're hungry, feeling pretty broke and therefore have no desire to go to the grocery to get ingredients for meals because that requires spending money, and have enough fixings to make tacos? Make tortillas!

We had 1 chicken breast thawed in the fridge, salsa, rice, cheese, and leftover veggie fajitas from our local Mexican restaurant... but no tortillas. I read a few months ago a blog post about making your own tortillas and how easy it was, and I had nothing but time to kill today, so why not?

These are not your usual store-bought tortillas! Those thin, chemical-packed things are a sad excuse for a tortilla compared to these.  Not to mention so much healthier since you know what the ingredients are. And the great thing is you can make your own as thick or thin, or big or small, as you want!

Homemade Flour Tortillas

Ingredients

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 3/4cup to 1-1/2 cups warm water (I needed nearly 1-1/2 cups of water... I suggest starting with the smaller amount and add more if needed in small increments)

Directions

• Mix the first three ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening, and then add the water slowly to form a soft dough.
• Knead the dough for a few minutes either by hand or by mixer (I did both, but I had issues with the dough being too dry and the mixer made life much easier when I needed to add more water) until it's smooth and elastic. If you've made homemade bread before you'll know what that's supposed to feel like.  Form the dough into a ball and coat it with a bit of oil and let it rest in a covered bowl for 30 minutes.
• Pinch off pices of dough, about the size of golf balls, and roll it out to your desired size/thickness
• Cook on medium heat using a griddle or a heavy skillet, turning to the other side as the top gets bubbly
• Stack on a plate under a clean dishtown to keep warm/steamed/pliable, and then serve with your favorite taco fillings!

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Red Currant Muffins

I discovered the deliciousness of red currants this weekend. I can never seem to find them in our local grocery stores - and when I do find them they're not very good looking - so I've never been able to try them. But we made a trip to Whole Foods in Dublin over the weekend and they had plenty, so I snatched them up to try.

I ate about half the container (because they're that good) before I realized that I should probably try to make something with them. The red currant muffin was born.

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• baking

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Passion...

... or, rather, the lack of it.

My brilliant plan to force myself to try new recipes - and then blog about it - has utterly failed thusfar. 

But fear not! Thanksgiving is upon us, and there are new recipes to be tried! There's a delicious sounding (and looking) sweet potato pudding with a gingersnap topping that sounds utterly heavenly in my latest Bon Apetite mag, and I do believe I'll be making it for Thanksgiving this year, among other new things.  Maybe this will become my one new years resolution? (I only make one, you know, because I'm ADD and therefore it's impossible to keep up with more than one thing at a time)

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• random

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Apple-Cherry Crumble

It's a restless but beautiful fall day today, and after fighting the urge all day I finally caved and did what I do best: bake. Specifically, an Apple-Cherry Crumble. Today has just felt like a perfect fall baking day. Oh but I didn't want apple pie, nor did I want just a plain apple crisp or cherry streusel. I wanted something... more. I had yummy apples to be used, and tart cherries from the local orchard in the freezer (a leftover from the 4th of July when I bought 20lbs of tart cherries to can and freeze). The combination has turned out to be a pefect match - that amazing apple flavor that is associated with fall alongside the tart cherries, a fantastic reminder of summer.

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• dessert

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Oven Spareribs

It's Monday, and a double-whammy of everything I hate about Mondays: I have no idea what to fix for this week's dinners, I'm bored and feeling incredibly unproductive despite my best efforts to accomplish things, and I'm hungry because Sean has my car while he's out for a photography project and I'm stuck at the office with no way of getting home to fix lunch aside from walking (and I don't have house keys to get in anyway).

So let's talk about the one meal I've managed to make within the last week: spareribs in the oven.

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• meats

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Grilled Herbed Potatoes

Can you believe that I'm actually starting to get a little bit ahead with this cooking/blogging thing?  Today I have grilled potato wedges to share with you!

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• sides

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Apple Feta Salad

There's this restaurant in Columbus called Marcella's that has the most delicious Apple salad ever: mixed greens, tart apples, red grapes, walnuts, gorgonzola cheese, and topped with a sherry wine vinaigrette. I'm a lover of salads in general but restaurant salads scare me - they're so... overloaded with crap. Not to mention the fact that some salads are as bad for you as a burger. But this one was the perfect balance of being fairly light and flavorful.

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Corn/Rice Medley: Just eh.

Sunday is normally our grocery shopping day, but I'm putting it off as long as I possibly can this week.  We have a LOT of food in our house. Plenty of food to feed us for the week, if not even maybe two weeks if I'm creative.  I really want us to use up some of our food that has been sitting on the shelves, so this recipe came as an attempt to throw something together with what we have. Which ended up being perfect because we had pretty much everything on hand!

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• sides

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Suggest a Recipe

I warned you that I'm lazy about fixing dinner, didn't I??

No new recipes have been cooked up since the last post. I can't tell if I'm just lacking inspiration or we're too busy or both. It really doesn't help that I'm having to readjust my cooking. I'm so used to cooking for 3 very hungry boys in the house and I'm having a hard time readjusting to normal sized   portions.

So. Got a recipe you think we should try? Send it our way!

Just Something I Made Up

We hit a wall this weekend. It was getting late and we could not think of something to fix for dinner. We really did not want to go out and buy something, but nothing in the house sounded good. I went to the web to find some ideas, but still nothing caught my attention. That’s when it came to me…make something up.

I was thinking about what we had around the kitchen that needed used. We had open bacon (the turkey variety), green peppers and tomatoes fresh from the garden, and some chicken breast that was thawed. It dawned on me that I could use those ingredients to make light pasta, similar to something you would get in a restaurant.

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