I made another batch of tortillas Friday, using a slightly different recipe (recipe below) that called for shortening rather than butter since I don't keep real butter on hand. Joely had a lot of fun helping me make the tortillas. We could even classify our cooking session as a geography lessons because one of the tortillas Joely rolled out took on the shape of the African continent. Joely thought that was really cool. (And, of course, I couldn't resist rolling out Antarctica after that.)
We made sure we kept the dough balls large enough to make 6 inch tortillas this time, and I'm happy to say that we succeeded in that. However, I'm still a little unsure exactly what temperature I need to turn the griddle to in order to have the tortillas stay soft; so half the tortillas ended up soft, and the other half crispy. But since I planned to use these tortillas in my wet burrito recipe, I figured the crispiness of the tortillas didn't matter too terribly much; the enchilada sauce would soften everything up.
Can you see the southern part of Africa here?
Speaking of enchilada sauce, I found a great recipe online, tweaked it just slightly, and tried it out—and the result was wonderful! The recipe I used made about 3 cups of enchilada sauce, and the cost was next to nothing. We'll definitely be using this recipe again.
So after making up the enchilada sauce, I went ahead and made a trial batch of wet burritos (to ensure everything tasted okay when I made it for company Saturday). So I used the homemade tortillas, enchilada sauce, and some leftover cubed cheddar cheese, and made five wet burritos—and they turned out great! Jeff was very pleased with the flavor.
After making this batch of burritos, I had 10 tortillas, a little of the bean mixture, and about 12 ounces of the enchilada sauce left over that I planned to use for our Saturday evening meal. I still needed some shredded cheese, however, so I went shopping for a few things Friday night.
I picked up some milk, soda, flour, shredded cheese, frozen vegetables, meat for sandwiches at $1/pound, and a few other things, and spent about $58 altogether. I still plan to shop again this coming Friday for the rest of the month's meals, but I think we're still on track to meet our $450 food budget for the month. If I had planned my menu a little better before my first shopping trip, I wouldn't have had to buy as many things during this trip. But the trip wasn't a budget-buster; we'll be using everything.
Following my trip to Wal-Mart, Kate, Toni, and I had our first TalkShoe online discussion. We had such a great time answering questions from our readers that we're going to hold another "Community Call" online discussion this Friday, May 16, at 10 PM Eastern Time. If you'd like to have us email you an invitation to this discussion so you can click directly into our call from your email, please leave a comment on this post with your email address. Otherwise, just join us this Friday by clicking this link.
And don't forget to check out what Toni and Kate are cooking in their kitchens for our "3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days" adventure.
Tortillas
3 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4-6 T vegetable shortening
about 1 1/4 cups warm water
- Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- Add vegetable shortening and use a fork or a pastry cutter to cut in the shortening.
- Add warm water a little at a time until your dough is soft and not sticky. You donot need very hot water.
- Knead the dough for a few minutes.
- Pull off pieces of dough to form about 12–16 small dough balls (I made 16 with 2” dough balls)
- Roll out the dough, making sure it’s fairly thin.
- Cook each tortilla on a griddle at medium-high heat.
Enchilada Sauce
3 T chili powder
3 T flour
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp oregano
3 cups chicken broth
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
- Combine all the dry ingredients in a small bowl. (Or you can keep from having to wash an extra bown by putting the dry ingredients directly into the sauce pan.)
- Slowly add enough of the chicken broth to make a thin paste, then add the rest of the broth. (I just added all the broth slowly while stirring constantly with a whisk.)
- Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.
- Once the sauce thickens, stir in the tomato sauce and heat through.
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