This week's dinners and healthy tortillas

This week’s meals:

Monday: Chicken and mango quesadillas

Tuesday: Curried chicken salad wraps

Wednesday: Broccoli chowder

Thursday: Baked falafel sandwiches

Friday: Homemade pizza – toppings to be decided

Saturday: Lentil tacos (frozen leftovers from four weeks ago)

Sunday: ???

I love tortillas. Tortillas are very flexible—they can be used in many different ways. But the yummy store bought tortillas have more saturated fat than I like since they are made with lard. Even the healthier wheat tortillas contain hard to pronounce unnatural ingredients. Therefore, I like to make my own tortillas. One of my mother’s patients gave me her recipe for tortillas, and I tweaked it to reduce the fat content and add whole wheat flour. They are tasty and healthy. I can make a large batch, and they last for at least a week.

So, today I made a bunch of tortillas. I used several in tonight’s dinner: chicken and mango quesadillas. I put the rest in a large freezer bag—they will be used throughout the week. In fact, they will be part of dinner on Tuesday and Saturday. And if I don’t have time to make pitas, they will be used in Thursday’s dinner as well. Any tortillas that are left over at the end off the week will be cut into wedges and baked as tortilla chips.

Healthier Tortillas – makes about 18 to 20 tortillas

Ingredients:

1 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour
½ salt
½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup canola oil
¼ cup milk

¼ cup water

Directions:

Step 1: Mix dry ingredients.

Step 2: In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients.

Step 3: Gradually add wet ingredients to dry ingredients while stirring.

Step 4: Knead dough and work until smooth.

Step 5: Using a cookie scoop, form dough into balls. Let dough balls rest, covered for 5 minutes. (I like to mix the ingredients in a lidded bowl—it makes keeping the dough covered very easy.)

Step 6: Flatten with a tortilla press or roll out each dough ball with rolling pin to desired round shape.

Step 6a: Although not the most environmentally friendly way to roll out tortillas, using two sheets of plastic wrap helps a lot. Place one sheet of plastic wrap on your work surface, and sprinkle it with flour.

Step 6b: Place a ball of dough in the center of the plastic wrap. Sprinkle top of the dough with flour.

Step 6c: Place second sheet of plastic wrap on top of dough.

Step 6d: Keeping dough sandwiched between the plastic wrap, roll dough out with rolling pin.

Step 6e: Once the tortilla is the desired shape, carefully remove the plastic wrap and use the same plastic wrap sheets for the next tortilla.

Step 7: Cook on hot griddle or hot skillet. Cook for approximately 2 mintues (until lightly brown), flipping tortilla every 20 seconds. (If you cook the tortilla with out frequently flipping, the tortilla gets hard and dries out.)

Step 8: Cover cooked tortillas with a clean kitchen towel while cooking remaining tortillas.