Thursday, May 17, 2012

Country Living

Country living has increased my hermit tendencies to unprecedented heights. Yesterday when someone rang my doorbell, panic led me to belly crawl my way from my office chair to the bathroom, where I hid out for 15 minutes hoping the unknown ringer would leave. This afternoon, I was planning my dinner menu when I realized the tortilla stash had never been replenished (yes, I have finally mastered the cheese quesadilla). My options were to get in my car, open the garage door and go to the store… Or, open my pantry closet and see if I had ingredients that would combine sufficiently into a tortilla. Can you believe that I chose the cooking option????

I found a recipe where I had at least 3 of the 5 ingredients, and since I’m pretty sure that white substance in the unmarked container is flour, I probably actually have 4 out of the 5! I was missing lard, but seriously, who are the people that keep lard in their pantries? Right at the top, the recipe stated, “Do not substitute vegetable oil or shortening for the lard.” Since I was taking a big enough risk with what I really hope is flour, I decided to listen to recipe instructions (although I secretly thought either oil or shortening would have been a good idea). The real reason I listened to the advice was that I had neither one of the banned substitutes, so butter it was.

I began mixing the ingredients together, but as the directions said to stop when the concoction resembled cornmeal, and not knowing what cornmeal looks like, I stopped when I got tired of mixing. By this time it was a substance able to be rolled with a rolling pin, so I couldn’t have been too far off. I rolled, cooked, flipped, and forgot which ones I flipped, so flipped some more. The result???


They are edible as evidenced by my testing them with honey, maple syrup, cinnamon and sugar, and butter. However, I think they might shoot splinters at anyone attempting to roll up something in them. Soft shells are over-rated right? If anyone runs into that other Kuna resident before he gets home, you might want to warn him that the cracker-like items are actually tortillas. And, although comments on the tornado that swept through our kitchen should be kept to a minimum, cleaning help should not!