FfNl: Corn Tortillas

One of my unofficial New Year's resolutions (official ones always seem to fail, so I'm going to go with unofficial this time out) is to try to use up the ridiculous amounts of food in my kitchen. I really have more food than any one person should have. I just like trying new things and like little challenges in the kitchen.

On to my story. Last night, after a longer-than-I-wanted day at work which was followed by a brief foray to the pottery studio to finish up the saki set I threw monday night, I peered into my fridge and grabbed things that needed to be used and threw together a mexican-type filling. One problem: I had no tortillas. However, I do have masa harina and a tortilla press that had never seen the light of day. Yes, I'm just that kind of person.

So I grabbed my trusty Rick Bayless Mexican cookbook and tried my hand at them.

Pretty, no? They were surprisingly easy. I may never buy corn tortillas again. Well at least until I make it through my current stock of masa harina. Seriously, you should give it a try. Well, you'll need a tortilla press, but for $12 you can have your very own.

Just think about it.

Nostalgia

This past weekend I drove up to my parent's house in the heart of the Adirondacks. The plan was for me to do some downhill skiing with my Dad. It was, of course, the coldest weekend we've seen in close to a month. Just perfect conditions. Ha.

Anyway, after a delightful Saturday of doing absolutely nothing, a cold, though not as cold Saturday, Sunday induced me to wimp out on going to Whiteface to downhill ski. Instead we went cross-country skiing. This is where the nostalgia comes in.

We decided our skis could use some glide wax, so Dad and I went down to the basement, which he had heated up just for the occasion. As I stood there with a decades-old iron dripping melted wax over the tips and tails of my classic skis, all I could think about was that it seemed like so short a time had passed since I did this regularly. It brought back warm, fuzzy memories of high school ski races (which I certainly didn't appreciate at the time). Just like that the skis were waxed, scraped, brushed and buffed; as if it had been a few years- not a decade- since I'd done this routinely. All this was followed by a fantastic ski, the kind that makes you wish you could go on forever. My weekend ended with a drive back to Ithaca on a winding road down through Inlet and Old Forge, which brought back even older ski memories of my Bill Koch skiing days.

God, I love skiing. Sometimes I forget how much. It was nice to have a reminder.