Cheap & Cheerful

Alright people.  This Cheap & Cheerful is not a wine.  For a change.  How about that?

So, I've been digging on these tortillas, from Tortilla Land, for a year or so now.  High time I posted about them, really.  Let me give you a little back-story though.  You know how I love a good back-story...

When we lived overseas, it was often hard to come by tortillas in the supermarket.  And when we did find them, they were on the pricy side, I thought.  Given my penchant for thrift, you can imagine how stoked I was to discover a recipe in a cookbook at our local Christchurch library, for homemade tortillas.  Ingredients?  Flour, oil, water, salt.  Easy-peasy, right?  Well...yes.  And no.

It was easy for any normal, sane person in full possession of their mental faculties.  I made them many times, with great success, but always despised rolling out the somewhat stiff dough.  The Mister eventually took over this task, in an effort to restore peace to the household.  (And limit our then 2 year old's exposure to gratuitous profanity.)   One afternoon, at a hefty 8 or so months pregnant, I had an irresistible craving for tortillas.  The Mister was at work, and I was fairly certain that while my 2 year old Boy was rather gifted in many areas, his tortilla rolling skills probably would leave a little something to be desired.  Ever one to embrace a food challenge (and never one to ignore a craving), I set to work making the dough, and rolling out and stacking each tortilla in a nice, tidy pile.  When it came time to cook them, I went to peel the first tortilla off the top of the stack, and realized I'd made a mistake.  A terrible, ridiculous, pregnancy-hormone-induced mistake.  I piled those freshly rolled tortillas on top of each other...and they were stuck.  Every single, bloody last one.  Needless to say (or needless if you know me), those pregnancy hormones now induced a teary, tortilla dough throwing tantrum.  Possibly with a few curses thrown as well.  Until my sweet, sweet Boy, came into the kitchen, gave me a stool, told me to sit down, and began rubbing my back, saying, "Don't worry, Daddy will be home soon.  It's okay."  (At Two years old.  Everyone needs a kid like this.)  I made an effort to reign in my rant, all the while wondering what sort of woman I was sobbing over stuck tortillas in front of a toddler, for goodness sake.  (Answer, a very pregnant woman.)  Anyway, after that, I stuck to the tortilla dough prep, and waited til the Mister was around to do the rolling.  I may have some serious episodes, but I do learn from them, you see.

So, a while back, when I came upon these tortillas in the supermarket, these uncooked, fake-food-free tortillas, I was beside myself with excitement.  I get that way a lot, don't I?  But seriously, you have a look at the back of the regular, shelf tortilla package, and try to count all the ingredients on there.  Or even pronounce them.  Gross.  These babies?  Flour, water, oil, salt, and sugar.  (The sugar isn't strictly necessary, I think, but it's a hell of a lot better than some of those others additives.  At least it's real.)  Plus you get to give yourself a pat on the back, that you're kind of making homemade tortillas. 

Thirty seconds per side on a skillet, or cast iron pan, or the barbecue (great for camping, by the way!), and there you go.  Delicious, fresh, and practically homemade tortillas.  And the best part?

They don't stick.