Homemade Corn Tortillas

Over the past few years I have seriously developed my love of Mexican food. This is a food I have always loved but never tried to make it at home aside from the boxed meals, you know the ones I mean. Chris got me started on making Mexican food from scratch. One important thing I have learned from making more authentic Mexican foods at home is that you can specialize them to your own tastes. Sure, this probably makes them less authentic but 100 times even more delicious. Of course, you might as well make your own tortillas too, why not? Everything is better homemade right?

You will need a special type of flour called Masa Harina. It is ground corn. More specifically it is a corn that has been soaked in lime, dried, then ground. You can find it in the ethnic section of your grocery store.

This dough is super simple, it is just water added to the Masa Harina until a dough forms. It will dry out easily so you need to keep the dough covered while you form your tortillas.

You will need to roll these out by hand unless you happen to have a tortilla press. Be sure to use plastic wrap to cover your press or you will have a mess. One piece each for the top and bottom.

Roll a bit of the dough into a ball and place it more toward the hinge instead of the center. You'll see how the press pushes the dough outward. If you put it right in the center it will smoosh off the end of the press and make a mess.

Now press and there you go, one flat disk of dough.

Now to cook. On pretty high heat, cook until browned slightly on both sides.

There is a nice little stack.

Now for the real reason I made tortillas, quesadillas. I used left over tangy slow cooker pork and cheese. Put that between two homemade tortillas and heat until the inside is hot and gooey.

Be sure to flip.

Top with salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, and avocado. Sour cream would be great as well. These are so tasty and really so easy.

Tangy Slow Cooker Pork

I must say up front that this was not my favourite recipe. It had all the components of recipes I like. It was easy, it built up flavour, and it had familiar ingredients. In the end, it was missing something for me. I would make this again but I would change it up and add more spices. I pulled this recipe out of a random cookbook on my shelf as part of my desire to cook from the books I already. I would say this was a 6/10 for me. My family liked it, however, so maybe it was just me.

Start with a seasoned flour coating for your pork roast. This was just salt, pepper, and paprika.

Heat up a bit of oil in a pan. This is to build the crust.

There is the star. This is a very lean cut of pork, as you can see, and but it takes flavour really well. It is pretty much a blank slate to be built upon.

Cover your roast completely in the seasoned flour.

And start browning. The heat should be high enough that you get a nice golden colour but don't let it burn. Make sure to get some colour all over.

Prepare your veggies. They just get a fine dice and set aside for now.

Keep turning your roast.

Nearly there!

Now for the sauce. Move the roast to the slow cooker and add the veggies to the hot pan. Soften the veggies and add a can of tomato sauce. Slow cook for 5 hours.

After 5 hours, the sauce comes out thick like a gravy.

The meat is very tender.

I served this with mashed potatoes. My secret weapon for mashed potatoes now is to use buttermilk. Do it, you will LOVE the extra zip and creaminess.

I think in the future I would add sugar to the sauce as I found the tomato flavour to be a bit on the bitter side. It was good but not exactly what I was expecting.

My Favourite Salad

About five years ago I went on a weight loss journey. A major weight loss journey. 80 lbs later here I am a fitter, lighter, happier version of my former self. I blame good foods and no self control for all the extra weight I was carrying. The thing was, most of the foods I was eating regularly didn't even taste good to me any more.  They were satisfying my fat and salt cravings and they were really easy to make.

This salad became part of my weight loss repertoire. I made and ate this salad for days on end and never tired of it. It's salty, it has healthy fat, it's crunchy, and most importantly it's tasty! With very little prep you can have a weeks worth of lunches and sides for supper in your fridge. It takes the pain out of deciding what to eat for healthy eating.

One of the key components to this salad is the dressing. You can find the recipe here. This recipe makes a lot of dressing. Make it in a jar and keep it in the fridge. I use this dressing on everything, it's that good.

Healthy olive oil makes this recipe good for you and satisfying.

Shake it up and keep it in the fridge. Shake it gently or the oil will solidify. If that happens to you just be sure to take your dressing out 10 minutes ahead of serving to let the oil warm up to room temperature again.

This salad is usually made with cabbage but I'm using romaine this time.

Now the veggies. Use whatever you have. I like to make this to the recipe but the dressing is really what makes this. The salad is just there because drinking salad dressing is gross. Haha. One thing to be sure to get is the bean sprouts and red onions. The rest is very flexible. If you are making this salad for the week keep back the watery veggies like the bean sprouts and tomatoes. Add them just before you eat to keep your other veggies from getting soggy.

This salad is tasty, beautiful, and HEALTHY. It is surprising how good it is for you.

I would normally eat this salad as a meal or with lean protein. I served it along side Sarah's Slow Cooker Pork for a fresh hit of clean flavours. The salad dressing is even good on the rice. Seriously, you will find so many places to use the salad dressing, it really is the star of this salad.

Sarah's Slow Cooker Pork

We went early to the airport on Saturday to pick up Chris and had a bit of extra time to look around. We found dinosaurs, Chris (eventually), and not much else.

A big one.

A little one, looking scared and a Phoenix.

Phoenix making faces.

Towers of luggage.

Despite travelling back from Germany and being jet lagged, Chris managed to get the beer started on Sunday. There will be more on that in the weeks to come. Here is a teaser.

 A really big pot.

A few things to go in.

Munich Helles of course.  What other type of beer would we make?

I will be taking more pictures and doing a proper post on the beer making process and will keep you updated through the weeks until it's finally time to taste. I can't wait!

Last week, a friend sent me a recipe to try. Naturally, I did. It called for stove top dressing which I don't buy so I looked up a recipe for it. This recipe ended up being pretty tasty!  You can find it here. This was also a perfect way for me to use up some bread that was going a bit stale too!

I started by basically making croutons.  I cubed up some bread and put it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

While, the bread was in the oven I mixed together the spices.

This calls for a few things but it was worth it. I didn't have sage so I just used poultry seasoning.

Let the croutons cool.

Put everything into a container with a lid.

Shake it up.  Simple right?

I had pulled out a pork roast and I cut into chops.

The pork goes into the slow cooker with one can of mushroom soup and one can of milk.

Top with two cups of stuffing mix.

Set it to cook for 5 hours.  I did it on high.

The pork will be falling apart, it's so tender. The sauce is rich and flavourful, the stuffing on top is soft and crunchy and so good!  I served this with a little rice and a nice salad.

Thanks for the yummy recipe Sarah!  Phoenix and I loved it and I would definitely make this again.

Spiral Sliced Hickory Ham and Everything Bagels

I have been having a really lazy week about getting pictures taken for this blog.  I have been cooking, sure, but remembering to take pictures, not so much.  On Sunday, I knew I would be spending the day in the kitchen.  We had picked up a ham from Costco and I also needed to make bread so I was prepared for taking pictures, mostly.

This ham is a bit of a celebrity in our family.  It is excellent hot, excellent cold, excellent in sandwiches, excellent in anything.  Seriously, anything.  I am always just as excited for the leftover ham as I am for the hot ham.  It comes spiral cut, as the name suggests, and it comes with a spice packet for the glaze.  The glaze is optional but really it's not optional, it's awesome!

This really couldn't be simpler.  Just get that beautious ham into a roaster.  I used my electric roaster oven for this and it was perfect.  Get it going for about one and a half hours.

Halfway there.  Look at the juices in the pan.

Time to make the glaze.  Just mix the packet with a bit of water and bring to a bubble.  This just gets poured over the ham.  Turn the temperature up on the ham for 15 minutes and you are done!

Oh isn't that perfect?  I served this with mashed potatoes and salad and ate WAY too much.  The spiral cut means that you just have to cut it off the bone and it's already sliced for you.  We have been having ham with breakfast and ham sandwiches for lunch and ham for supper.  It is ham heaven here!

I have an everything bagel recipe I sort of follow.  I say sort of because I just don't bother buying malt powder and sometimes I don't have sesame and poppy seeds, like right now.  My version turns out fine and I end up making it a bit different every time.  I put the dried onions, garlic and onion powder into the dough instead of just on top.  So I basically just do my own thing based off the recipe.  The dough is just a base, go nuts.

This recipe was a necessity for me in Munich as I could not find bagels very easily and when I could it was only sesame bagels.  I have also made this with caramelized onion when I couldn't find dehydrated onion.  

The thing that makes bagels different is how you cook them.  You make the dough and let it rise.  Then you shape it and let it rest.  Next, they get boiled.  It only takes about 30 seconds on each side.

Once the bagels are boiled you want to set them on a rack to let them dry a bit.

  Then comes the egg wash (one egg beaten with one tablespoon of water).

Brush that on.  It helps them brown but more importantly it helps your toppings stick.  This time I didn't bother with any toppings.

They look kind of sad when they come out of the water but trust me, they puff up and look more like the bagels you are used to in the oven.  They bake in a pretty hot oven for about 20-25 minutes until nice and golden.

With a little bit of work and time you can make your very own everything bagels at home and they taste even better than store bought.  I have found they have a lot of moisture and can be hard to store.  I like to keep them in an open plastic bag and eat them within a few days.  These freeze really well.

I bet you can guess that I have been having ham and bagel sandwiches.  I have and they are awesome.  I also made whole wheat bread on Sunday which turned out really great!