Tuesday, August 31, 2021Alarming Behavior
Let's review Mila's sleep history. It'll be real quick.
She started out as THE BEST BABY EVER OMG. She was a rock star about sleeping in her crib and she slept long periods of time and it was amazing and fantastic and all of that. Basically, she was perfect. Don't even get jealous about that because that other kid was the absolute worst and the universe owed me a perfect sleeper.
And then when Mila was two years old, the Penguins made the playoffs. I didn't want to miss any part of the games so instead of putting Mila in her crib and waiting for her to fall asleep, I started letting her fall asleep in my lap on the couch. Near a TV. Basically, I broke her. It lasted ...
... Forever.
Laying on my lap on the couch has been her preferred way of falling asleep ever since. FIVE YEARS. For five years, the kid has really very rarely slept in her own bed because she falls asleep in my lap and then verifies that I'm still near by every few hours all night long. She has managed to sleep in her own bed one night to earn a pet hamster and maybe two or three other times? It probably isn't that many times. It's probably just the once because she wanted the hamster.
It's completely my fault. I'm mostly okay with it. I fought the other kid tooth and nail over sleeping more than two consecutive hours so I'm all out of fight when it comes to sleep. Mila can do whatever she wants whenever she wants just so long as she sleeps each night. That alone makes her better than her sister, so yeah. Whatever.
Guess who magically started sleeping in her own bed last week. GO AHEAD. GUESS.
Not Alexis. She's still the worst sleeper of all time.
Mila, though. Mila got the brilliant idea that she needed an alarm for school. She figured out how to tell Alexa to set an alarm on her little Amazon speaker and Y'ALL. SHE HAS SLEPT IN HER OWN BED ALL NIGHT EVERY NIGHT SINCE. It's been over a week.
FOR AN ALARM. She was willing to change her ways FOR AN ALARM.
If ever there was a backwards kid who does everything the opposite of the rest of us, it's Mila. I'm over here doing whatever I can to avoid having to set an alarm, and here Mila is turning her whole life around for the privilege of having a speaker beep at her early in the morning.
So weird.
Veggie Fajitas
I really have no use for most of the kitchen gadgets that many people swear by. Fancy stand mixer? Meh. Gimme my cheap hand mixer. Bread maker? No, thanks. I have hands. They know how to make bread and they don't take up space on my kitchen counter. Food processor? Umm...want mine? Because we received a fancy KitchenAid food processor for a wedding gift and I've used it precisely twice.
And ... it will probably stop there. I tried to use it to make homemade tortillas, but then there was flour covering every inch of the kitchen and ... hands are better.
And so my hands made flour tortillas from scratch and then they busted out some veggies and tofu and made fajitas. TRY THAT, YOU STUPID FOOD PROCESSOR.
Ahem.
The flour tortillas were crazy easy to make. I started with four cups of flour, four tablespoons of cold butter (cubed), two teaspoons of salt, and two teaspoons of baking powder. I threw them all in a bowl and mixed them up WITH MY HANDS.
And then I added a tiny bit more butter because things didn't look quite right.
Then I mashed it all up WITH MY HANDS. (I'm yelling so my food processor hears me.) (I know I'm out of my mind. You don't really need to tell me.) The dough started out a little sticky, but after a few minutes, it turned into a perfect ball of dough.
Then I divided that big ball of dough into 24 little balls of dough.
And each one of those balls got rolled out into a cute little tortilla.
There should be a photograph here. There isn't because I was too busy rolling out tortillas to pick up the camera. I hope you'll forgive me.
Once the 24 little flour tortillas were rolled out, they each took turns in a hot skillet. I cooked them each for about a minute on one side and about 30 seconds on the other. There wasn't any oil in the pan or anything. Just cute little flour tortillas.
They turned out perfectly.
I'm going to have a really hard time buying tortillas in a store now. They're so easy to make at home and the ingredient list is way less twitch-inducing.
Flour Tortillas
(recipe shamelessly stolen from Mindy)
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons cold butter, cubed
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1.5-2 cups of milk
Throw the flour, butter, salt, and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and squish and toss and mix it with your hands, being careful to not grope the butter too much because it needs to stay cold. If you grope it, it might melt. No melty butter, please!
Once the flour mixture looks like cornmeal, hollow out a space in the middle of your bowl of flour and pour in 1.5 cups of milk. Squish it with your hands until it turns into a nice dough that sticks to itself, but not to your hands. If it seems too dry, add more milk. If it seems too moist, add more flour. Follow your gut. Your gut is smart.
Divide the large dough ball into 24 small dough balls. Allow the dough to rest for about ten minutes and then roll out each tortilla. The tortillas should be about 8" across and about 1/16" thick. The thinner you can get them, the better.
Heat a large skillet (or griddle if you're fancy like Mindy). You aren't putting any oil or anything in the pan, so to test to see if it's hot enough, splash a few drops of water into the pan. If it sizzles, you're good to go.
Place your first rolled out tortilla into the skillet. Allow it to cook for about one minute. Flip it and cook it on the other side for about 30 seconds. The tortillas should look like this:
Perfection, no?
What's that? They aren't perfectly round? ... And? Personally I like them better when they aren't perfect. "Perfect" doesn't give you happy accidents like this one.
Which brings me to the stuff that goes inside the fajita. I hesitate to call this a recipe because it's really whatever I have on hand, but I do have a preference. I personally hate when I order fajitas at a restaurant and they are nothing but onions and peppers. At home, I make sure there is way more to them. My favorite ingredient list:
Veggie Fajitas
1 package extra firm tofu (cubed)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cilantro, finely chopped
1 clove garlic
1 carrot, thinly sliced
Juice from one lime
1 red pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1/2 cup chopped spinach (I used frozen this time, but use fresh when I have it)
1/3 cup corn (again with the frozen this time, but canned or fresh would work)
Shredded cheese
Sour cream
Like I said, this isn't so much a recipe as it is a list of things that get thrown into a large skillet together and cooked over medium heat until they are however soft you want them. The only real trick is knowing what order to work in. Start with whatever will take the longest to cook and work your way towards the quicker cooking stuff.
Which is to say, start with the protein. You might want chicken or beef or whatever, but we like tofu. Go ahead, mock us. We can handle it. (If you do use dead animal for your protein, drain off the fat before you start adding vegetables. Us tofu people don't have any fat to drain, so we have to add the olive oil with the tofu to prevent sticking.) Throw the cilantro in with your protein.
Next up, the carrots. I don't like mine crunchy when I'm eating fajitas, so they need a while to cook. The carrots get joined by the garlic after a minute or two.
After that I add the red pepper. Then I squeeze the lime juice in before adding the onion, zucchini, spinach, and corn.
I can't really tell you how long it will take for your vegetables to be perfect. That depends on your definition of "perfect" and your stove. For me it takes about 20 minutes from the time I throw the tofu in the skillet until I turn off the heat.
Once the vegetables are done, you stuff some in a flour tortilla and top with shredded cheese and sour cream.
My fajitas have always been crazy good. Adding homemade flour tortillas made them CRAZY GOOD OMG ::DROOL::
No joke.
