You guys aren't going to believe this...

I made TORTILLAS!!! Yep, I yelled that :). A while back I found this recipe and thought it just might be worth trying the tortilla making torture one more time... Sure enough!! It actually worked for me and was really good! I still get happy spasms whenever I think about it :).

Ingredients:

2-3 Tbs sliced canned jalapeno peppers

1/2 cup water

2 Tbs oil

4 oz cheddar cheese

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups flour

Plop jalapenos and water in blender and blend until peppers are minced. Dump them into a bowl and add the oil, cheese and salt. Stir well, then add 1 1/2 cups of flour and stir until its a good doughy consistency. Add flour until you feel like its a good kneading consistency. Dump out on floured surface and knead in the rest of flour (add more if you need to). Divide into 8 balls and let rest for 10 minutes. Roll each out into about a 10" circle. Cook over medium heat on a griddle or frying pan (with NO oil or grease!) about 1-2 minutes on each side until brown spots appear and tortillas are very hot. YUM!!

Of course getting it into a circle shape might need a little practice...

OK. If you want to know the REAL secret behind successful tortilla making... Shhh. It IS a secret. Ready? Send your husband to the store for tortillas before you start making them. Heh heh, it really works! Just remember, you did NOT hear that from me.

Quesadillas!

So this morning was another 11:55 "Aak!! What am I making for lunch?!?" day. Yeah, I don't think any of you have a big problem like I do: Alex comes home at noon and is due back at work at 1! It's horrible! Heh heh. So the point is, I didn't know what to fix today. Then I remembered I had tortillas (no, NOT homemade!) in the fridge. So I grabbed those out, grabbed my trusty Sams Club sized bag of cheddar cheese, a pound of precooked burger from the freezer, and set to work. I'll bet you'll never guess what we had! Oh wait! I told you in the subject. Oh well. So we had quesadillas. Only these were different quesadillas. First I waaaay overspiced the meat in my haste (ALWAYS look at a recipe if you have this same tendancy... yeah, I've done it before). So in an attempt to rectify that, I thought sour cream would be perfect with it, right? Well, we were out! So I grabbed out some homemade plain yogurt. Voila! Alex liked it so much that he said I needed to post it on here! Titus seemed to love it too. "Mwah yogyert Mom?" Recipe:
several tortillas
some cooked hamburger
lots of cayenne
lots of chili powder
a bit of onion powder
salt
lots of cheese
plain yogurt

Directions:
sprinkle burger liberally with cayenne and chili powder, and moderately with onion powder and salt. Taste several times, think it needs something more, and add more cayenne and chili powder. Taste one more time, think it still needs someth.... AAK!!! WATER WATER!!! No help... gasp gasp gasp... more water!! Um.... yogurt!!... deep breaths... Whew! Where were we? Ah yes, spread some burger on a tortilla (only a teensy if its for Titus) and sprinkle liberally with cheese. Top with another tortilla and plop on frying pan. Cook over low heat turning once so both sides are browned and the cheese is all melty. Snip into quarters (or smaller for children) and serve with yogurt.

Titus loves "yogyert" so he picked up his little bowl and drank out of it... you can see the bowl shaped ring by his mouth that goes all the way up on his forehead :).

And that, my dear ladies, is our fantastic quesadilla recipe. I shall attempt to duplicate it in popularity in the future, however hopefully NOT in the spicyness!

Gorditas, Anyone?

This is made similarly to my Stovetop Pizza (see post below). I made flatbread on the stove for lunch the other day and Alex commented that it reminded him of Taco Bell's gorditas. That sounded really delicious to me so a couple nights later I made it again, along with all the taco fixings. It turned out delicious, if I do say so myself :). Bread:
1 1/2 cups warm water
! Tbs sugar
1 Tbs yeast
1 tsp salt
4 cups flour

Either pile ingredients in your bread machine OR stir together water, yeast, and sugar. Let sit about 5 minutes, then stir in salt and flour. I mixed it in my Kitchenaid and used it right away without any rising time. Just smoosh it out flat, cook in frying pan over med-low heat until lightly browning on one side. Flip and cook on other side. Pile on taco toppings and gobble it all up. Hope y'all enjoy!!

Tortillas!

We've been making tortillas for a year and a half or two now. I've tried multiple recipes, but the more closely I follow the recipe, the less we like the tortillas. This is an issue because I made a vow not to buy any more tortillas. Do you know how much those things cost now!?! Or how many we can go through? So finally on Tuesday (May 11, 2010, oh blessed day), Micah and I made perfect tortillas! The whole family loved them, but most importantly, James gave them his highest stamp of approval. It's a good thing we liked them because we made 32. Too many to not like! I make mine a nice mediumish 8-10 inch size. It helps to not make them bigger than your pan. : ) I get 10-12 out of this recipe.

1 1/2 c warm water
1 1/2 t salt
1 t sugar
1 t oil
3 1/2- 3/4 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 t yeast (optional)

I mix these up in my bread machine, just layering the ingredients in order, but you could also mix these in a Kitchen Aid or by hand, following any normal bread recipe mixing procedure. Anyway, I throw everything in the machine, and mix until the dough is nice and smooth, but not the whole cycle. Just a few minutes will do.
Let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Spread a little oil on the counter top, and dump the dough out on it. Divide into golf ball size pieces, about 8-12 ish. Grab a rolling pin and start rolling. Sort of pat the ball of dough into a round disk to get started. If the dough is sticky I dip one hand in the flour, and pat a little on both sides. You don't want too much, because if it doesn't stick some, you aren't going to roll it out very thin. Just keep those critters as round as you can, and go just about as thin as you can. You can do thicker ones to the a "gordita" effect.
After you get several (or all) of them rolled, heat a dry (no grease) frying pan or two to a mediumish heat. (You know it's too hot if you get a lot of browned spots on your tortillas.) Lay a tortilla in the pan. When it starts getting little bubbles, flip it over and bake the other side. this will only take 45-84 seconds per side. It goes fast. This is good because everyone is getting hungry by this point.
I like to have a team effort going. I roll for dear life, and a kid (usually either Micah or Amanda) cooks.
As you remove the tortillas from the pan place them on a towel, and cover with another towel. Tortillas need to be kept kind of steamy. Don't let these guys dry out. Oh yeah, the goal is to keep these moving fast enough so they DON'T brown at all. Beware of the "cook-it-until-it-is-done" impulse. The paler, the better.
The nice thing about these is that it only takes me about half an hour to 45 minutes to make these, start to finish. Faster than a trip to the store!