I have recovered from the shock of bumping into two different people who knew my name this past week. They recognized me and initiated contact, I didn’t see them until they spoke. How pleasant each encounter was, catching up with how our lives are going. Two! Could be years before it happens again, but it did happen.
Yesterday I had a brilliant idea for dinner, or so I thought. A previous gift to ourselves was a tortilla press. We had not used it yet, so I proposed we make refried beans, and homemade tortillas. It was the first time we tried making all this from scratch on the day of. First let me say how impressed I am with the tortilla press, it worked flawlessly and is super simple to use. Attila did the pressing, as I cannot strain, using parchment paper on the top and bottom of the press. Each ball of dough was transformed into a perfectly round and beautiful tortilla, with almost no effort.
Things went downhill from there. It turns out that I misread the recipe, and did not subdivide the dough properly, creating eight tortillas instead of ten. Doesn’t sound like a big difference, but the error made for disappointing results. The tortillas were too thick, and although they were cooked, the result was a tasty round with cardboard consistency. On top of that, Attila undercooked the beans, so that the refried beans were very, very chewy. We ate our dinner in silence. We don’t waste food here, failures are consumed. It is a rare event at our house, that a meal is so disappointing, but learning new things comes with a bit of risk. You win some, you lose some.
I treated myself to an evening snack of popcorn, just to compensate for the eat-to-live meal.
I am keen to try again, but next time I am using my bread recipe to make the dough, not a flatbread recipe, and will use a lot less dough per tortilla. Attila will be soaking the beans overnight before he cooks them, his choice, I would just put the lid back on the instant pot and give them more time if it were left to me. I am not sure when we will give this another go, soon perhaps, because I will be making burger buns again, and there is always a bit of dough left at the end, which we could flatten with the tortilla press and cook in the cast iron frying pan. I am keen to see how that will work out.
Tonight we enjoyed our dinner, which consisted of a green salad, with homemade salad dressing and croutons, and sausage burgers, with homemade sausage patties and buns.
It is already the middle of April! Since my last entry the world has turned a brilliant green. It has been raining, every day, for the last three or four days. The garden is bursting with activity. The rhubarb is suddenly over a foot tall, the overwintered lovage is taller than the rhubarb. The red currant bush I thought was dead last summer is budding profusely. The stalks on Granny’s Rose are greening, and Attila has already pruned the dead stalks. The lungwort in the front yard is blooming profusely now. And the birds! Suddenly it is as if we are surrounded by a full fledged avian musical.
It is chilly right now though, quite chilly. When we work outside we are wearing our parkas. It won’t be long though, until we shed our winter wear, to step out without our gear.
Worldly
Weather
Updated on Sun, Apr 14 at 6:47 PM
12°C
FEELS LIKE 12
Partly cloudy
Wind 4 NW km/h
Humidity 72 %
Visibility 22 km
Sunrise 6:24 AM
Wind gust 5 km/h
Pressure 100.4 kPa
Ceiling 500 m
Sunset 7:50 PM
Quote
“A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.”
Pearl S. Buck
1892 – 1973
Trial and error. I bet the net batch of tortillas will be delicious. We’ve had quite a bit of rain in the midwest. Now the grass is beautifully green and I wake up to birds singling. Spring! Yay!!
Sandy, I am one of those people who almost ALWAYS falters the first time around. It takes me a while to get a feel for things, and I have always been this way.
I’ve learned over the years to accept faltering as I grasp a subject or project on the first go, it is my modus operandi. It has been decades since I felt any shyness about this particular trait, and I’ve been misjudged because of it many times. The beneficial side of it is that when I do get a feel for whatever I am learning, I have a thorough grasp of it, inside out, and can be creative with it thereafter.
I think this trait made me an effective teacher, as I perceive and respect alternate ways of learning, ways to structure logic, and data.
I am glad to hear it is green and beautiful where you live, and that the birds are serenading you! Spring, love it!
We now have forsythia and magnolia blooming here. And the weeping willows are even getting leaves. It’s so nice to see!
We enjoy making all kinds of wraps using tortillas: souvlaki wraps, shrimp wraps, sausage wraps, chicken wraps, breakfast wraps… Good eating!
Teri, the first blooms of spring are such a welcome sight! Although there are no forsythia or magnolias near us, we do have the lungwort, wild violets, and dandelions beginning to bloom in our yard. On a walk I did see a daffodil blooming. More to come as spring progresses.
Your wraps sound so delicious! My first attempt at tortillas would not roll, too much like cardboard, but I hope to do better with practise. And I hope to make them low sodium, the ones we can purchase in the store have too much sodium in them for me, and often contain preservatives which are a no no for me. There are a few companies that make healthier choices though, for a price.
Congrats on your joint retirement. It must be a wonderful feeling of freedom for Attila after decades of hard work. To be the arbiters of all your precious time together is the ultimate luxury in life.
Sorry forgot to enter my details on the above post. Just to let you know I am still not getting your email notifications. Maybe it is something wrong on my end.
Thank you Sandra for your well wishes, I love the phrase “arbiters of all your precious time together”… exactly!
I am wondering if somehow my email messages got tagged as spam by your filter, it could have been a keyword, or something more obscure. I have changed the email protocol, and reentered your email address. I’ll keep investigating!