Dark Days Week #16

This week our dark days meal was not picture worthy, but I figured it was post worthy because I made my own refried beans and attempted to make my own tortillas. We've all been sick in my household and nobody is really hungry for much. My son must have asked every day if he could just have fruit for his meals and my daughter who could usually eat us out of house and home hasn't been to keen on meals this week. So we've been eating a lot of plain rice and pasta with raw fruits or veggies on the side, a lot of leftover soups from the freezer and yes even the last Campbell's we had in the cupboard. I think I only have about 5 cans of food left in there to eat one day and then it will all be gone!! I haven't bought any canned food, sauce, etc since we started this challenge and don't plan to.

On to the meal of the week that is post worthy, which was burritos we had for dinner Sunday night. I have started cooking beans A LOT since we gave up most non local meat but usually we eat them as is or in a soup. When we have burritos I just scoop the beans in whole and roll them up but my son usually says that's not a burrito and deconstructs his. So this time I decided to try my hand at refried beans and used a recipe from Rick Bayless: Mexico One Plate At a Time. Eventhough it is really just mashed up beans with some onion and garlic I am still pretty proud of myself that they came out good and my son ate his burrito whole! For some reason I always thought they would be hard to make but now I'm not scared anymore. The beans were from SunCoast Farms, the onion and garlic were from the farmers market and the avocado oil was from Bella Vado. I think what made them extra delicious to me was that I usually don't salt or season my beans at all and this time of course I did. I think I'm going to start experimenting with my beans now and adding a little something more than water when I cook them. I also attempted to make whole wheat tortillas, but that did not turn out as well as the beans. I found an EASY recipe in a hand me down old Whole Earth Cookbook that simply said mix flour, salt and water, knead till elastic, roll into balls, flatten into tortillas and heat on the griddle. LOL, not so easy for me. I have just started to actually knead a few products and I think maybe I just don't have that down. I mixed the ingredients, kneaded until I thought it was elastic and then wondered where I went wrong. As I split them into balls, they were slightly sticky and when I attempted to roll them into tortillas they stuck like glue. I was able to pull a few off the board and get them on the griddle, but they looked terrible and tasted not so yummy. Thankfully we had a few tortillas left over from the last trip to the market and my refried beans didn't go to waste. I piled the beans into the tortillas with Lundberg brown rice and topped mine with the last of my FireHouse Jack cheese and cilantro from the market. I just joined a new challenge over at Not Dabbling in Normal and my goal is to get good at tortillas, bread, crackers, bagels and english muffins this month....so I guess attempt number 1 at tortillas failed, but I will be trying them again.