Confessions of a Ward Organist

When you’re cooking on a budget, beans are a staple.  They’re inexpensive, versatile, and tasty.  We use them in chili, soups, bean burgers, vegetarian tacos, and more.  Our favorite bean recipe by far, however, is homemade refried beans.  They’re really easy to make, and they are so yummy, I have to stop myself from eating them straight out of the pan before dinner.

All you need to make your own homemade refries is as follows:

1lb bag of pinto or black beans (believe it or not, black beans are more commonly used to make refried beans in Mexico, but we prefer pinto)

3 cloves garlic

1/2 medium onion, chopped (or a generous amount of onion powder)

butter or oil

Salt to taste

Start by rinsing and sorting your beans to be sure you’re not cooking up  some rocks along with your beans.  Place them in a large pot and cover them with a lot of water.  Bring to a boil, and boil for two minutes.  Remove the pot from the heat, cover, and let it stand for an hour.

Once the hour is up, drain the beans and cover with 6-8 cups of fresh water.  Chop two of your garlic cloves, or push them through a garlic press.  Chop your onion. Add the garlic and onion to the beans.  Bring to a boil, cover with a tilted lid, and cook for about two hours, or until the beans are soft.

Heat a few tablespoons of butter or canola oil in a large frying pan.  Chop or press your remaining garlic clove, and cook until soft and fragrant.  Add a few spoonfuls of the beans, and mash them with a potato masher, or the back of your spoon.  Add a bit of the liquid from the beans (or water, if the liquid cooked down).  Keep adding spoonfuls of beans, mashing them, and adding a bit of liquid, until you’ve incorporated all of your beans.

Add more liquid than you think you need because they will thicken a lot.  once you’ve incorporated all of your beans, add some salt.  Taste the beans, add more salt if needed.  Just keep adding salt and tasting until they are just right.

Serve them warm with some fresh homemade tortillas and rice you’ve got a really yummy meal!

Krystal lives in Colorado with her husband, a self-proclaimed broken hipster, and their son, whom they lovingly refer to as, The Bug.  The list of things she loves includes (among other things) sewing, decorating, the Pacific Ocean, classic films, classic literature, cooking and baking, chocolate, shoes, and nail polish.  She spends her days chasing after The Bug, picking up her husband’s wet towels and dirty socks, blogging, sewing, cooking, and trying to make her home as comfortable as she can.

See? The Damsel told you she was nice. Now then. The Clever Mommy.

There are few memories of my mother and myself in the kitchen that I remember with more fondness than the days that she would let me help her make tortillas.  Of course helping was more like watching, but I didn’t know that then.

We would spend a few hours in the afternoon, while my brothers were outside playing, making a huge batch of soft delicious tortillas.  They would be used in various meals during the week, and heated in a pan, topped with a little melted butter for snacks.  She would tell me about how she learned to make them from the mother of one of her friends in school, who had come to the United States from Mexico.  Inevitably the story would turn to the time that she was spending the night at that friend’s home and was asked to stir the soup that was cooking on the stove.  I would cringe and giggle at the same time when she told me about the goat eye ball floating in the soup when she lifted the lid to stir.  Apparently they didn’t waste any parts of the animal when they cooked.

These stories still float through my head as I make tortillas in my own home, without Mom.  And the tortillas are still super soft and super delicious.  So delicious, in fact, that I forsake my gluten-free diet every once in a while simply to make and eat these tortillas.

Authentic tortillas are made with lard.  If you want a truly authentic flavor, you should use lard, too.  I am a vegetarian, however, and the shortening that I use works just fine.  I’ve even used butter in a pinch.
To make 18 tortillas, you’ll need the following ingredients:

3 C. flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 C. shortening (or lard)

3/4 C. HOT water (as hot as you can handle it)

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, and then cut the shortening in with a pastry cutter or your hands.  The mixture should look crumbly.  If it’s not crumbly, and more resembles flour, you need to add a bit more shortening.

Add the hot water and mix with your hands or a fork (I’ve heard a stand mixer is great for using nearly boiling water without having to touch it).  Press against the sides of the bowl to pick up all of the dough.  If it’s sticking to the sides, you need to add a bit more flour.  You should have a nice moist dough that can be formed into a ball.

Form the dough into 18 balls, and then let them rest, covered with a damp kitchen towel, for an hour.

Lightly flour your working surface, coat your rolling pin with flour, and roll out a dough ball until paper thin.  It will not be perfectly round (unless you have some magical tortilla rolling powers that I lack).

Heat a frying pan (I prefer stainless steel) over medium heat, and place the tortilla in the pan.  Let it cook until it starts to bubble up, about a minute, then flip it over.

Let it cook another minute or so, and place it in between two kitchen towels.

All of my kitchen towels were dirty, so I had to use paper towels. Don’t judge.

Continue the process with the remaining balls of dough, and stack them all in between the two towels.  Store them in a large ziplock bag in the fridge to keep them soft.  If they do get a bit hard, all it takes is a few seconds in the microwave or in a hot pan on the stove to make them soft and pliable again.

Enjoy!

Yield: 12 jumbo pretzels
Time: 3 hours

4 t yeast (active dry or instant)
1 t sugar
1 1/4 C warm water
5 C flour
1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 t salt
1 T canola oil
10 C hot boiling water
3/4 C baking soda
Pretzel salt to taste
1 egg, whipped until frothy




1. In the bottom of your Kitchen Aid or Bosch Mixer dissolve 1 t sugar and the yeast in the warm water. I just stir it around a bit with a spoon. Let it sit for 5 minutes, or until the mixture begins to bubble and rise.


2. Add salt, 1/2 C sugar, oil, yeast, and 1 C of the flour. Mix for about 30 seconds.


3. Add the rest of the flour 1 C at a time. This recipe needs ALL 5 CUPS of the flour. It will seem a bit stiff at first, but the pretzels still turn out very soft with all 5 cups. You need this much flour, or your finished product will be more roll like than pretzel like.


4. Once all the flour is added mix on high for about 8 minutes.


5. Let the dough rest and rise for 1 1/2-2 hours. The dough needs to rise until at least doubled in size. This recipe takes a while to rise, but don’t cheat this step. The pretzels will be much more difficult to roll out if the dough hasn’t risen enough.


6. Heat your oven to 450 degrees.


7. Punch the dough down and divide it into 12 equal portions. I used a sharp knife sprayed with cooking spray and a cutting board for this step.


8. Place each piece on a sprayed cookie sheet and let them rest for 10 minutes. Don’t skip this step….unless you enjoy letting the dough rule over you while you shape it. Give it a rest an you will be In-Charge-Marge. Otherwise, the dough is very hard to manipulate.


9. Combine the 10 C water and baking soda in a large pot. Bring it to a boil.


10. While the water heats, roll each dough piece into a long thin rope. Twist it into a pretzel shape.


11. Put each piece (one at a time) into the boiling water for 30 seconds.


12. Place on a sprayed cookie sheet and brush the beaten egg over the top. Sprinkle with pretzel salt.


13. Bake for 8 minutes at 450 degrees. Enjoy!


We opted to leave the pretzel salt off on occasion. When they came out of the oven we brushed butter on the top and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar…..delicious!

Trailing Rose Petals

For extra credit, please visit her beautiful blog, Towards Sustainability.

One of the first things I did when we began to live more simply was to look for homemade substitutes for commercial products.  I *heart* my slow cooker (aka crock pot) and at the time I used a lot of canned condensed soups in various slow cooker casseroles, so when I found an easy-to-make substitute on Tammy’s Recipes website, I was excited!

As the comments on her original post imply, this recipe is so tasty,  quick and easy I would never go back the bought stuff again.

Homemade Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

1½ cups of chicken stock (broth)*
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp dried parsley
1/8 tsp ground pepper
dash paprika
1½ cups milk
¾ cups plain flour

* I like to use homemade chicken stock, made from leftover roasted chicken carcasses, which I freeze for storage.  Homemade stock will be really flavorful, however you can, of course, use bouillon cubes or powder.

Method:

Add ½ cup of the milk to the chicken broth in a medium saucepan:

And then add the herbs and spices.  Luckily for me, my trusty measuring spoons include one for “dash” so I can get the paprika just right

You’ll need to heat the mix until boiling, and continue to boil for 1 or 2 minutes whilst whisking the mixture.

In the meantime, add the plain flour to the remaining 1 cup of milk:

And whisk together until you have a nice smooth batter:

Then pour this into the mixture in the saucepan:

And continue to heat whilst whisking, until the mixture is nicely thickened, about 1-2 minutes:

And there you have it! Easy peasy.

This recipe makes the equivalent of two cans of condensed soup; I divide mine into two and freeze in labeled portions until needed, when I thaw it in the refrigerator overnight. The recipe can also be easily doubled, tripled etc.

Now that’s one more product you don’t have to buy

Extra credit assignment: Pop over to MMB where the Damsel is being featured today. She’s spouting off about having babies, kindergarten immunizations, uncontrolled sobbing, and stages of life. You won’t want to miss seeing a certain cute fuzzy head.

Clicky:  Saying Goodbye