We had been doing well on eating whole foods for quite awhile, but slowly and surely we slipped. Now we're back to trying to do things from scratch and only eat things that are really food that grows from the ground. Not chemicals created in a lab. Did you know red food coloring is made from the shells of beetles? Sounds appetizing doesn't it?
Cooking from scratch seems more expensive but is actually way cheaper in the grand scheme of things, it also only contains things that you put in there yourself.
A friend of ours is going gluten free to see if it helps her feel better, they came over for dinner yesterday and Phillip was going to make Fajitas. We usually make them by using store bought flour tortillas. Since flour contains gluten I decided to make corn tortillas from scratch. It was a little bit time consuming but overall it was really easy! Phillip picked up a bag of this stuff at Kroger on his way home:
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| I think he said this 4lb bag was $2.50. |
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| The recipe is right here on the bag! |
Ingredients:
2 cups Torti Masa
1 1/4 cup water
1/4 tbs salt
In a large bowl stir together the salt and flour, then add the water to make a dough. I ended up using 2 cups of water because the dough came out crumbly at first.
After you've made the dough section it out, this amount should make 16 tortillas. Roll each one up and get your skillet warmed up.
Now you can roll out your tortillas, which is easier said than done! I placed the ball of dough between a ziploc bag and a cutting board so it wouldn't stick to the rolling pin. They're going to look a little wonky but they're still pretty tasty.
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| It helps to have someone rolling them out while you're cooking the other ones, this way they don't get the chance to dry out! |
I at first tried putting the dough in the ziploc bag but it just stuck to everything. When transferring this to the griddle I did have to carefully remove them with a spatula or they would fall apart.
Now you just cook it until it's done! Just brush a little oil on your griddle before placing the tortilla on, if you want them to bubble up pat them with a damp paper towel before you flip them.
I'm not sure how long they took to cook, I wasn't really paying attention!
I'm also not sure what the nutrition facts are for this recipe but I can't imagine it would be too terrible! I didn't realize that we had corn tortillas in the cabinet so I decided to check out their ingredients.
Ingredients:
Corn
Water
Sodium Propionate (propionic acid, sodium hydroxide)
Methylparaben
Propylparaben
Gum Blend
Sorbic Acid
Fumaric Acid
Dextrose
Again our ingredients were: corn, salt, water. I think I'll stick with homemade from now on! That bag of flour was $2.50 and I estimate that it will make at least 5 batches of 16 tortillas. The corn tortillas we bought at the store were probably $2.00 for 18. Making them yourself is a much better value!
What things do you make from scratch? Care to share your recipes?
