"Tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt."
Mmm. A childhood story. Just a warning: if you're on a paleo challenge you may not wanna read this.
I come from a pretty hispanic family and we probably eat all the foods that you imagine we do. And my grandma was the best cook in the whole world. Rice and beans, enchiladas, calabasa con pollo, huevos rancheros. Nom nom nom. My most favorite thing to eat was my grandma's homemade tortillas. They were perfection. They were thick and buttery and amazing.
I remember watching her make the balls of dough as a kid, fascinated. She would pull out all the ingredients, put them on the counter and then, like magic, she'd be putting fist sized balls of dough in a plastic bag to refrigerate for cooking the next morning. Because, of course, we needed fresh tortillas for breakfast the next morning.
I distinctly remember the day she let me help make tortillas. I got to stand up on a chair so I could reach the counter like a big girl. I remember laughing as she'd kneed the dough and her wedding ring would disappear into it and come up covered. Then, she'd complain that she never remembered to take it off before she started. She would walk through each step out loud so I'd remember what she was doing. I remember her smelling like flour, Crisco, and grandma all rolled up. She'd hand me a big clump of dough and tell me to roll it up in a perfect circle and I did as I was told. By the time we got to the end of the dough, I had a lot of perfectly round circles. She used the last of the dough to make two "baby circles". We packaged up our circles and left our baby circles out.
She used her rolling pin to flatten out our baby circles and cook them up on her comal (flat skillet). She covered them in butter and we sat down to eat 'em. She said we needed a treat for all of our hard work.
Even after all these years later, I still remember what she smelled like, how she laughed, and how to make the perfect flour tortilla (I'd share the recipe, but it's a secret!)
