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10 August 2009
I EAT IT→[More:]
CHICKEN POT PIE AND HOME-GROWN LEEKS NOM
I just spent about 6 hours cooking (so far!) today. Mostly it's because I had 25 lbs (~11 kilos) of canning tomatoes. Hence my earlier comment about tomato juice.
Specklet, I'm not sure about the tortillas. I haven't had much luck with them, except for this one summer when I was in Mexico staying with a Mayan family. Part of what I was doing was observing women's household duties, and we spent a lot of time in front of a hot fire. The masa was made the old-fashioned way, and I've never, ever been able to duplicate the pure heaven of those tortillas. SIGH.
It's not hard to make corn tortillas that aren't dry and sad, but it might be hard to get the masa harina. I've used this method with success. BUT I haven't made them since leaving Texas.
Now, my understanding is that masa is the dough from which you make tortillas. And that masa is made from corn flour (masa harina) and water. This article suggests that that is not true and says that corn tortillas made from store-bought masa harina mixed with water are greatly inferior to corn tortillas made from ground corn mixed with water. I dunno. Maybe the stuff we called masa harina in Texas wasn't corn flour at all. I dunno. Now I'm going to have to buy a bag of it and see how my tortillas turn out. Except I don't have a tortilla press, and honestly, I hate making tortillas unless I'm standing around with a bunch of fun people, gossiping, with sangria.
essexjan - that looks lovely, but as someone who is allergic to hazelnuts, that is the ICE CREAM SANDWICH OF DEATH.
(it is a strange allergy to have - I'm not allergic to any other kind of nut, and it didn't come upon me until after I was thirty. oh well, I had plenty of Nutella before then!)
A friend of mine made me wonderful homemade tortillas a few times. He said the secret his grandmother told him was to put some lard in there. Not shortening, lard. I have no idea how much, he wasn't sharing all of the family secret. Those were some damn fine tortillas, though.
I made my own granola this weekend (coconut flakes, goji berries, dried cranberries, oats, almonds, cashews, pecans, cinnamon, honey) and it came out ssoooooooooooooooooo awesome that I think I am obsessed. I can't stop eating it.
I ate it on yoghurt this morning, then kept popping handfuls throughout the day, stopping only to eat my "real lunch" of homemade yellow curry with tofu, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and carrots.
I wasn't really hungry for dinner, so I ate one of the cucumbers from my garden with low fat honey mustard dressing. Mmmm. Now if the eggplant will only grow!! Oh, and I discovered I finally have cantelopes forming, hooray!