Ridiculously Easy Tortillas

I admit, I realize that 98% of my readers are in the United States, and probably 80% are in California. And in California, there is no shortage of decent tortillas. So basically, this post is for 2-20% of you. But in any case...

Tortillas! Living in New Zealand has already proven to be a culinary adventure, and this is the next chapter. I have read on several kiwi blogs that while tortillas aren't that hard to find in New Zealand, decent ones are pretty rare. Complaints range from 'brittle' to 'weirdly elastic' to 'tastes like cardboard'. Instead of subjecting myself to disappointing tacos, I decided to just go for it and make my own. I mean that's what all the other over achieving show-off foodie Kiwis are doing. And while I was prepared for a major cooking disaster, they turned out pretty darn good.

The recipe is from a fellow blogger who was also on the hunt for decent tortillas. It's got very few ingredients and steps, which both increase my chances of success. Especially with the poor excuse for kitchen utensils I have at the moment (come on, big boat in the ocean!), like Bachelor Ben's Bowl.

(And a side note: I had a quick lesson on preparing Mexican food with a good family friend before the holidays. I feel the need to say I'm sure these tortillas are nowhere near her standards. Also, I have yet to find lard in the stores here, which I think may be a key ingredient to the perfect tortilla. But if you're reading, Cynthia, I'd be keen to see your recipe!)

Anyways, our key ingredients:

Ridiculously Easy Tortillas:

3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup hot water

Combine flour, salt and baking powder. Whisk together. (Here is where I forgot to take a picture with Ben's Bowl.) Add canola oil and mix together with your hands to create a uniform "crumby-ness". Lastly, add hot water, knead together with hands.

Let dough rise minimum of a half hour, or place in refrigerator overnight.

Divide dough into 12 equal balls. Mine were just a tad larger than a golf ball.

Roll them out with flour, until they are about 8 inches wide and uniformly round. Unless you're into oblong tortillas... that's cool too.

I don't actually have a rolling pin at the moment (re: boat somewhere on the Pacific...) so I used my trusty Enloe stainless steel thermos. Scott pointed out after all dinner was consumed that a wine bottle would have been a great rolling pin. Why didn't I think of that?

Fry tortillas on a dry frying pan on med-high heat. It only takes about 30-45 seconds per side for the perfect brown bubbles to form, and then it is time to flip.

My taco fillings: black beans, sautéed onion, bell pepper, and salmon, with tomato,
avocado, cheese, and sour cream. Mmmmm!

I discovered the hard way, if the heat is too low, the tortilla turns into more of a cracker. Or a frisbee.

I stored the final product in the oven, on low, while I finished my cooking. This worked perfectly.

Don't they look like real tortillas!?

Serve warm, with lots and lots of yummy ingredients!

This picture makes me truly sad that there are no left overs right now!

Lastly, look at what we got!

Nope, not good beer. Carlsberg is awful.

The astute reader will remember that I have been holding out for a kitchen table. We've got a bed, 2 chairs and a sofa, but haven't had a table for the last 5+ weeks. I found this lovely piece on TradeMe.com for $120! It's in beautiful condition. Hiring a trailer to haul it (behind our Subaru Justy, no less!) was quite the adventure, but alls well that ends well, and we ended up with a great table! Now we can finally have guests over!

S.O.S.

Houston, we have a problem. A very serious, genuine problem.

Let me back up though.

We've been here for 12 days, and oddly, no one has propositioned me to be best friends for life. Weird, I know. However, we are lucky enough to be invited over tonight by a friend (of a friend). It's Christmas Eve here, so we're actually really happy to have some company to spend it with. But more importantly, we recognize that we must make friends of our only prospects, and therefore I am pulling out the big guns.

Cookies. Who doesn't like homemade chocolate chip cookies, warm out of the oven? No one I trust.

Thus began the great cookie adventure of Christmas '12. Ingredients weren't actually too terribly hard to find. The baking soda doesn't come in an orange box, which is totally wrong, but all other ingredients are pretty good to go...

Except. One. Thing.

The key ingredient, chocolate chips, are totally wrong. I started with "dark chocolate chip buttons" because the packaging appealed to me and they claimed to be dark chocolate. Thank goodness I sampled them before getting too far from the store (don't judge me). Gross! Like the chocolate surrounding a Cadbury Cream Egg... waxy and way too sweet.

Like any self respecting cook, I turned around and exchanged my other un-opened package for a bag that simply said "Dark Chocolate Chips", and the ingredient list (which I've never had to check on chocolate chips before!) started with "cocoa solids" instead of "sugar" which I took as a good sign.

Foiled again. Instead of big wax buttons, I got small wax tidbits. I'm on the fence about whether mouthfuls of weird chocolate is better than bites of cookie with such little chocolate chips you can't taste them. Either way, fail.

They look deceiving...

See the micro-chip size? What the heck?

But they're just wrong. And I find this so alarming, it's obviously worth writing home about. These sub-par chocolate impostors better not cost me my new friendship.

If anyone in New Zealand knows where to find real chocolate, I'm all ears.

If anyone in America wants to send me real chocolate, well you'll get a super peppy post dedicated to you in my blog... but that's about it, really.

Pumpkin Success and Other Small Triumphs

This is our self-awarded prize-winning pumpkin. She's the only one we grew, no thanks to the Backyard Terrorists. After 2 weeks of being proudly displayed on the porch, I decided it was time to put our gourd to the test and make some tasty treats. No use in having our one pumpkin get thrown in the street by kids on Halloween, or get all moldy... 

The thing that everyone except myself probably realizes first thing about baking with fresh pumpkin is that you have to turn this squash into a usable food substance. Most commonly, and for my purposes, puree. Unfortunately, not as easy as throwing this baby in the blender.

Step one: cut in half. 

Step two: carve out seeds and stringy pumpkin guts.

Chicken brain: "She brought us a treat! What is it?" 2 seconds later... "gross." Waddle away in disinterest.

Step three: Bake at 450 degrees for 90 minutes. (I had to do one half at a time, because it was so large).

Step four: Scoop out baked flesh, spin in food processer.

Step five: Store in freezer if not using immediately.

Baked pumpkin, pumpkin puree, and the end result: about 12 cups of pumpkin puree.

This was an all day process, but now I have fresh, homegrown pumpkin puree. Immediately I made gluten free chocolate chip pumpkin muffins. (Recipe? Click Here. Add 1/2 cup chocolate chips.) They were delicious, and I forgot to take a picture of them. When I remembered 2 days later, they were gone.

The next day I made pumpkin soup, courtesy of Ree, The Pioneer Woman. Far from low fat/low cal. Click here for this recipe. It's super simple, but I was still proud of my soup, because it's from my pumpkin.

Exciting soup picture, no?

And then my most recent adventure: REAL pumpkin pie. No cheating. Real crust, real whipped cream, real pumpkin puree. I have to say, I really liked the way it turned out, although I might alter the spices a touch next time. But the pumpkin flavor was great. Scott doesn't like pumpkin pie (totally bizarre, I know) but even he had a few slices.

We had a few friends over to enjoy pie, so there's only one piece left for the taking:

Made in grandma's pie dish, of course.

 So that's the adventures of my prized pumpkin, so far. Theres at least 6 more cups of puree in the freezer though, so we'll see it happens.

In the meantime I've been madly job hunting in our preferred places in New Zealand. I have such great feelings about the whole thing, I can just feel it starting to come together. There's a few leads and some potentially exciting news, but I'll share when I really know more. What I do know, is that everything is falling into place.

Like this!!!!!!!!!!:

Its official!

And yesterday evening we had two different couples (potential tenants) walk through the house. And they both loved it. Nothing is for-sure yet, but it's looking like that December 1 move out date is right on target.

Terrifying? Not anymore.

Exciting!!!