By Request, Homemade Tortillas

Ever since I told my dad that Dave and I made homemade flour tortillas he has really wanted to see pictures of them. So, Dad, this post is for you!

Dave often just has an idea pop in his head of something new he wants to make and we go from there. That is what happened with the tortillas. Flour tortillas are easy and fun to make. Corn tortillas take a bit more work and we have not tried those yet.

Because our kitchen is so small, we had to roll out the tortillas on our kitchen table. After making the dough, you roll it up into little balls and then let it rest. After the dough rests, you roll it out.At first I had difficulty with the dough sticking to my rolling pin. Once I covered my rolling pin and the dough in flour I had no problem.

Cooking tortillas is also easy. Preheat a cast iron skillet and then cook each tortilla 10 seconds on each side. We made fajitas to go with our tortillas. Homemade tortillas taste so much better (and are cheaper!) than the kind you buy wrapped in plastic at the grocery store and they don't take very long to make. I think making tortillas would be a fun family activity. I know we enjoyed it!

Ground Beef: Three Ways

We are always on the lookout for a good sale. So when ground beef was on sale at the grocery store for .99/pound, I knew I had to buy some. The meat was only available in three pound increments and I did not have any recipes that called for three pounds of meat and that would be a huge meal for two people. I divided the meat into three one pound patties and froze two.

The first meal I made with my ground beef was taco salad. I love taco salad and it goes a little ways towards curing cravings for Mexican. My favorite way to make taco salad is to crush up tortilla chips and build up from there adding your favorite toppings. Yummy! Taco salad is an easy dinner that I usually make every other week.


The second meal I made with this ground beef was "Favorite Casserole". It is a Sawyer family recipe. It is a casserole of green beans, tomato soup and ground beef topped with mashed potatoes. It is similar to shepherd's pie. This is a comfort food that is perfect for a chilly evening. This particular meal was made even better by the homemade bread that we had with it and baby carrots cooked with brown sugar and butter.

The last meal I made with this meat was also the best. It may have been one of the best things I have ever made. We had a half used jar of spaghetti sauce, which inspired me to make spaghetti and meatballs. I used the recipe for Italian Meatballs from the Joy of Cooking. They turned out extremely well. They were full of flavor and very moist. Ironically, they were so good that Dave and I did not want to cover them with sauce. Instead, we lightly tossed the pasta in sauce and topped it with the meatballs. The recipe made enough meatballs for us to have leftovers. I will definitely be making these again. If you have a copy of the Joy of Cooking, pull it out and make these delicious meatballs!

El Pollo Rico

For those of you who don't speak Spanish, El Pollo Rico means 'the rich chicken.' However, I would just call El Pollo Rico really delicious chicken which would be Pollo muy Saboroso. We have frequented El Pollo Rico since we moved to Arlington.

Dave first discovered the restuarant last year when he interned at a building next door to it. El Pollo Rico serves Peruvian style chicken. The chicken is covered in spices and cooked rotisserie style over a charcoal fire. You can order a quarter, half or whole chicken. If you choose one of the first two your meal will be hacked with a cleaver in front of you. The chicken comes with coleslaw, french fries and two dipping sauces.

The chicken is always very moist and hot and it has great flavor. The coleslaw is on the runny side, but it still tastes good. Although they are just frozen fries, EPR really knows how to fry them. They always come out perfectly crisp and golden. They are some of my favorite fries anywhere. One dip is a garlic mayo and the other is a hot green pepper sauce. They are good on their own, but are especially good mixed together.

Everytime I have been to EPR it has been very crowded with a diverse clientele. There are always several large Peruvian families at the restaurant, but they often account for less than half of the customers. The decor of the restaurant is extremely plain: almost like a wharehouse. Yet the delicious food and great people watching makes up for the lack of decor.

Generally there is plenty of time for people watching as you have to wait in line to park in the parking lot and then wait in line some more inside. The last time we went we had to take ours home because there were literally no tables for us to sit and eat. However, the food is good enough (and cheap enough, 2 can eat with drinks for $12) to keep people coming back for more despite a 20 minute wait.

This was the first real meal we had in our apartment and the first meal we made for
just the two of us since being married. This was just a classic chicken dish. The chicken was served with red potatoes and a butter wine sauce. I served it with salad and steamed baby carrots.The recipe for the chicken and potatoes came from the "Real Simple" box of recipes.




These are two loaves of bread made by Dave. Fresh bread is much better than store bought bread and it is surprisingly easy to make, especially if you have a sturdy stand mixer which will take care of most of the kneading. However, be warned that your kitchen may end up covered in flour!

This recipe makes delicious honey wheat bread. As I mentioned before it makes two loaves, which is fortunate because it is so delicious. The last batch we made lasted the two of us about two weeks. We cover the bread in aluminum foil then keep it in the fridge. We enjoy using the bread for sandwiches, toast and snacks!

This is another meal we enjoyed in our first week in our apartment. It is cheesy baked lentils with brown rice, salad and homemade bread. The cheesy baked lentils are essentially a casserole made up of lentils, onion (lots), tomatoes, celery, carrots, spices and cheese. We decided to give lentils a try because they are so economical and it turns out, they can be delicious. Dave and I think this dish is a really good 'comfort food.' We have already made it a second time and it gives us lots of leftovers! We found the recipe in the Mennonite cookbook More with Less. The bread recipe also comes from this cookbook.