Homemade Corn Tortilla Chips

Nachos are yummy. 

Homemade tortilla chips are yummy.

Nachos with homemade tortillas chips? Perfection. 

I don't know about y'all, but food is getting hard to find at our little grocery store and the stores in the city have a lot of social distancing rules going on making it near impossible for me at 29 weeks pregnant to get the food we need. 

So I'm getting inventive. 

I've tried homemade tostadas before and they just haven't turned out right.  But when I couldn't find tortilla chips but I could find corn tortillas, I decided to give it another try. 

I initially bought a package of 80 corn tortillas for $3.  Every time I made chips, I used 2 cups of coconut oil (we buy it in bulk from Bulk Apothecary), 20 tortillas and a bit of salt.  20 tortillas gave me about 160 chips. 

So how do you do it?  Pull out a skillet and put your oil in, heat your oil until it's sizzling... While it's heating, get your tortillas cut-I cut the stack in 6-8 pieces depending on how big you like your chips, I do 8.  Lay out a sheet pan with paper towels for draining the oil off.  Once your oil is hot enough, start adding your chips.  I put a few in at a time until I know the oil is hot enough, then I do enough at a time to fill up the pan. 
Now, I don't have a thermometer to keep the oil at the perfect temperature, so I just pay close attention, remember the longer your oil is on the hot burner, the hotter it's going to get, so you may need to adjust the burner temperature.  It takes me about 20 minutes to get through the batch.

Don't mind the dirty stove... It needs a good scrubbing again. 
I let the tortillas stay on one side until I can either see a bit of brown around the edges or until it stops sizzling as much-you'll hear the difference.. then flip them and do it over again.  How long you leave them in also depends on how done you like your chips.  I usually end up burning the last few pan fulls in the batch, but they still taste scrumptious. 

After I get a few batches on the sheet pan I'll put some salt on and just toss after they cool off enough to handle.  I was putting salt on each batch as they were fresh from the pan, but they were too salty for us. 

To make tostada shells, just do the same thing, except don't cut your tortillas, put them in the pan whole. 

That's it, you're done.  Easy peasy. 

Sit down and enjoy the chips of your labor... Unless of course your kids eat them all.. In which case, gobble them up while you can.

~Tabitha

What To Do When We're Stuck

I think most everybody in the States is mostly stuck at home right now.. Whether it's self quarantine or government quarantine.. We're pretty much stuck..

Now, staying home the majority of the time is not new to us.. But there's something psychological when you choose to stay home versus being told "you HAVE to stay home"...  Honestly for us, this stuff hit at the end of the month and got bad RIGHT before grocery shopping... I had planned on going a little earlier so we had a month of groceries, no problem... then the city issued a plan to keep the kids  at home, germs at bay and only essential outings needed.

Let me tell you something about our monthly shopping trips.  I NEED help.  It's not negotiable.  Typically my help is my kids as we go when hubby is working...  I cannot do a month of shopping by myself because two of the three stores I NEED two carts.   I'm also 25 weeks pregnant.. so pushing one cart is hard on me and baby by the end of the store, but two.. Nope I can't do it.  I can't the pull and pick up options because everybody is booked out a month at least in advance... SO... we are shopping the sales ads from our local store weekly.. The problem with that? The supplier has put a limit on how many pounds of food they can order.  WHY? I HAVE NO IDEA.  So, they are only getting essentials that are needed and those are now limited.  Our fresh veggies are getting low.   EEEK.   I'm hoping we can make it to a bigger store and to get honey before the governor issues a shelter in place order...  Then I'm relying on the local store only.   And when I say we, I mean Dennis and the kids in the van with me going into the store to get what's needed for the week-with extra peppers and onions, because those are freezable.

So what are we doing?  Impatiently waiting for the weather to warm enough to work outside and in the garage...  I have many projects waiting and going on.

We've also decided we need to be serious about eating healthier... and that means looking at all the labels and figuring out what all of those scientific names are-because some of those names are vitamins.   So.... we're starting with breakfast, pasta and breads.   Now, I wasn't planning on going into ALL the breads...then I went grocery shopping.  Guess I'm making tortillas.

So what's changing with breakfast?  Mostly the cereal..  Everything else we eat for breakfast is already real food.  Which is pretty awesome.  So I'll be making granola so we have some easy breakfast around.. But my PLAN is to just start making the kids' breakfast-whether it's hot oatmeal, baked oatmeal, coffee cake.. You get the idea?  I can't just do eggs and bacon and toast because one of our girls can't eat eggs... SO it has to be other things. 

Pasta.  The pasta sauce we buy is actually pretty basic as it is.   (Prego, Bertolli and sometimes Rinaldi.)  Dennis bought me a pasta roller and cutter when he bought me the kitchen aid mixer.  That thing is awesome.  I finally found a YouTube video on how to make pasta successfully.  Flour it until you think it's too much, then you're good.  This last batch of pasta turned out great.  My next experimental pasta is going to be farfalle and ravioli.  The kids eat macaroni and cheese a lot, so that's a meal that needs changed.   I don't have the fancy farfalle and ravioli cutters-but I have read a knife or pizza wheel works just fine, just seal your ravioli.

Bread.. Hoagie rolls, garlic bread, bagels...  We're using the hoagie rolls for the garlic bread.  Bagels were actually pretty easy, though they didn't come out very uniform in size, but I'll figure it out.  Apparently I'm making tortillas..because the store was wiped out.

Hoagie Rolls

Bagels

Corn chips! 

Cinnamon Sugar Donuts

This week I made granola and German pancakes...  The German pancakes didn't go over that well.. But it's a great protein for this mama so I'll make a single batch at a time after this.  They are eating the granola this morning..  Elijah isn't sure about it, but I've seen him eat the crunchy granola bars no problem, so he'll eat it.  It smelled pretty awesome-too much sugar for this momma. 

This weekend is my pasta experiment weekend.  We'll see how it turns out.  I'm also going to try French bread instead of hoagie rolls for the garlic bread... 
I also attempted homemade corn dogs.. that didn't turn out well... Apparently the hot dogs (or in our case, brats) have to be room temperature if not warmed up a little to get the batter to stick.... So.. we'll try again..  At least the batter could be used as corn bread muffins. 

Now, if you need help with preserving any excess groceries you might be able to pick up and are worried about spoiling, check out Jammerill's vlog.  She's freezing things I haven't heard of freezing before and I'll definitely keep them in mind.    Yes, I realize the length might be a little intimidating, but the awesome thing about Jammerill and her vlogging, she explains EVERYTHING so you don't have to watch, I usually turn it on while I'm lesson planning, folding laundry, sewing...  Might as well learn something while I'm doing housework, right? 

Be safe.  Don't forget to give time to God.  His peace passes all understanding, it's unexplainable.

~Tabitha