Tortillas all the way down. Or was it tortugas?

Well I'm on a writing binge (yes, it's just as gross as it sounds) so I figure I'll write a blog because... well you've missed me for a month, haven't you! I also realized that I need to write regularly because when faced with a REALLY important application, I've failed pretty hard. It's thanks to some amazing friends and family who aren't afraid to speak honestly to whoop my ass into writing something that may qualify me for AwesomeScholarhipofAwesomeness. We'll face the verdict of that some other time, hopefully.

I will re-asses when school starts what my posting schedule will be because I have two labs per week this semester. Yey chemistry!!!

In the meantime, it's the end-ish of winter break and due to some incredibly idiotic bureaucratic decisions at Craptastic Community College District, my financial aid is in in a horrible money jail with no bond. WHICH MEANS IT'S TIME FOR ENDLESS BURRITOS!!!! (warning, I am unabashedly White and this is not a traditional recipe, it's something I just made up.)

Endless Burritossss

• Tortillas, 10”. Can be corn or flour. I use flour because I don't do well with corn
• 1 can (14.5 oz) canned tomatoes. Try to find un-seasoned. A case of these is about $8 at Costco. (can use 2 medium fresh, more expensive though)
• Either 1 medium onion of ½ of a large onion, chopped finely
• 2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• a bunch of olive oil
• 1 cup rice. I like brown rice since it takes longer to digest. I chose long-grain. There is a difference in cook-times with different rices, so this is less trivial than it seems.
• A bunch of water
• *1-2 serrano peppers. Jalapeño are also acceptable.
• ¾-1 cup dry beans, prepared and cooked. See some other blog of mine for bean cooking. Spices to cook with might include bay leaves, Better Than bullion, thyme. No oregano for this dish! Here it is! Towards the bottom of the page
• *MEHIIKAN CHEEEESE (Mexican cheese). We got the shredded, four cheese blend from Costco. Trader Joe's also sells a nice blend. Or you can visit your local Mexican grocery store.
• *Sour cream
• *guac, if you're into that.

*ingredients optional and based on financial availability. Guacamole you can get cheaply if you live somewhere that you can buy avocados or pick them off trees.

Rice first! First things first, make sure your pan/pot is about 10” in diameter and 2-3 inches thick. If you need to make the rice in a different pot, do that. Don't want overflow.

Make sure you've cried out all of your onion tears. On a medium heat, warm oil and put garlic and onion in pan. Translucify the onions. They shouldn't be full-on caramelized but they should be mostly there.

Add the matoes. Fold the tomatoes so they are evenly distributed with the onions. Then bring in the rice. Fold in the rice so it's evenly distributed because it will fall to the bottom and it won't matter. Cover the whole mixture with water, so that most everything is submerged. Bring to boil. Boil for 5-10 minutes, covered.

Reduce heat and let simmer, checking and stirring about every 10 minutes. Water is your friend and it tends to disappear so make sure there's plenty of it till close to the end. The more the rice cooks up, the more you will have to stir to maintain even distribution because rice clumps. White rice usually cooks in 20 minutes, brown in 40.

Rice and beans: 

NOW THE PEPPER.

Yep. I'd never actually used a hot pepper before I randomly decided to buy two serranos. Different peppers have varying amounts of optimal wrinkly so ask your friendly grocer what means what. Serrano are more spicy than Jalapeños.

Things I learned too late:

• scrape out the white part and the seeds unless you really like spice. 
  • If a pepper tastes like bread, you will be in pain within a matter of minutes, have glass of milk or horchata nearby.
• DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T DO IT. And if you did, DON'T WASH IT AND SPREAD THE OIL CLOSER TO YOUR EYES. Just let it burn. It hurts like a son of a gun but it's not worth getting in your eye. Believe me.

Best to do all of this without touching your face at all and wash your hands thoroughly about 5 times before touching your face.

I chopped up the pepper to the smallest pieces my knife could manage. Then I folded them into the rice mixture. I think two serrano peppers turned out to be too spicy but only by like..half a pepper's worth. You'll notice that I didn't include cilantro. This is because I hate cilantro. But if you're one of the people who likes it, go ahead and chop some up at this point and add it!! It's probably good at this point to transfer the rice to a pot or something so you can use the pan to actually make the burritos.

Tortilla-friends

We had a house-mate for a while who subsisted on quesodillas. He would put the tortilla directly on the gas burner and cheese would drop on the little thing that catches stuff around the burner. Though this pissed me off to no end, it was very informative in terms of how puffy a tortilla should be before adding anything to it. The gist is that you want a few bubbles puffing up, then flip and there should be bubbles.

Be kind to your house-mates and use a pan. Apply tortilla directly to pan on medium-low heat. If things start burning, lower the heat. It will work, just takes longer.

Let tortilla bubble on one side, flip. Bubble one second side and put on a plate.

add rice

add beans 

add cheese

fold this way

fold that way

Or maybe fold your own way because mine turned out trapezoids instead of mostly round.

Put some oil, enough to kinda cover the pan but not too much that you'll deep fry, in the pan. Place burrito, folded up side down.
 I would suggest keeping the heat pretty low on this part so nothing burns because it tends to. Play it by ear and check every 4ish minutes to see if it looks toasty. Then flip.

THEN EAT YOUR BURRITO!! ¡MUY DELISIOSO! Add sour cream and guac as you see fit.

I made a bunch (hence the large amount of ingrediants), let them cool and then wrapped them in tin foil and froze them. My guess would be let thaw then micro and maybe toasty-up on stove if possible for re-heating. I can also see an oven working out ok, but it'll probably take an hour from frozen.

This song, particularly his face throughout, is my new favorite song.