frankie says relax...take a deep breath and have a burrito

FIRSTNATIONS COVETED BURRITO RECIPE!!!!!!!!!!!!
remember...read the whole thing first, then start. I have provided links to two helpful and easy- to-use conversion tools for those of you from doofus parts of the world that don't use teaspoons and Fahrenheit like normal people.

part un...the beans
This is the lazy way, with canned ingredients.

3 15 oz cans pinto beans
1 can red kidney beans
1 can small red beans, or flor de mayo beans, or black turtle beans
1 large white onion, minced fine or grated
1 tbl epizote
1/4 tsp ground oregano
1/4 tsp cumin (comino molida)
1 4oz can fire roasted green chiles, chopped (don't cry; this is completely without heat.)
optional, to taste:
1 tsp hot ground chile (lal mirch)
or
1 tsp mild red chile
or
1 tsp ground pasilla (this is what I use. yummers!)
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Don't drain anything. Just dump everything in a pot, stir to mix and simmer at least 1 hour, stirring and mashing the beans frequently. Taste for salt and let cool. You want a thick grey porridge with chunks of bean in it. It looks really ugly, but looks are deceiving, kids.

Now you have vegetarian refried beans! Lucky you! * Refrigerate for an hour to make them easier to handle.

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part deaux: assembling freezer burritos:

-1 package of 12 flour tortillas (also works with gordos, thin pita breads, chapati or gyros. just any thin, round, flexible ethnic flour and water flatbread.)
NOTE: DO NOT use whole wheat tortillas...it tastes like shit. A little white flour won't kill you.

-refries, cooled

-add as desired to refries, or not; I don't care. This is how I do it, though.
....grated cheese (like cheddar or monterey jack)
more grated onion


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part tres: assembly

-quickly heat the tortillas in a frypan on med-high, turning once, just enough to make them a little brown on each side, and stack them on a plate. This makes them nice and soft and blooms the flavor.

(optional step-smear the inside of each tortilla with death dealing radioactive hot sauce with all harbeneros and chipotles and jalapenos with death hotness of heat before loading with filling. mm-mm good!)

-Drop a heap of refries onto a tortilla and roll up like a sleeping bag. You can tuck the ends if you want. Congratulations! This is a burrito! You may eat it now, or...

-Lay them on a plate and slide them into the freezer until they're solid

-Stack the frozen burritos into a large container that you can seal tightly, like a tupperware or a ziploc bag. Repeat until desired number of delicious burritos are stored away against the coming darkness.
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-Whenever you want something delish, take one out, pop it into the nuke and there you go!

-Or fill a square baking dish with them and let thaw...then cover with commercial enchilada sauce, bottled red or green taco sauce or more grated cheese and bake at 350Fahrenheit (176 Celsius) for 30 minutes. You have enchiladas! Yay!


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QUESTION: FirstNations, could I just wimp out like a little bitch and used canned vegetarian refries?
ANSWER: Ask your mommy.

QUESTION: FirstNations dahlink, I am a stud horse. May I use 2 parts dried pinto beans to 1 part each flor de mayo and soya beans, rehydrated using one can of lager in place of part of the soaking water? And may I put the grated onion in with it, and the spices, and let it all soak up nice? And may I use fresh minced Anaheim chiles?
ANSWER: Yes you may, but only if you enjoy delicious, superior, ass-kicking flavor.
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*In fact you will have some left over after filling the burritos. Extra lucky, you! Spoon it up or dunk chips in it! (That's crisps, brits.)

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here is a nifty Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion dealie...just enter a number and click!
http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm

and here is a conversion chart for all kinds of shit, including cooking nomenclature. scroll down to choose the conversion category you want:
http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/cooking

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signs and omens part 1

The first news story that popped on to the screen when I turned on the television this morning was about a young mother in Sacramento CA who found the holy visage of Jesus staring back at her from the surface of the burrito she'd just cooked.*

I maintain that it is no mere coincidence that Jesus would choose Mexican food as his Sacred Venue. So far this makes two Holy Burritoes found this year, and if we count the wrapping separately, five Sacred Tortillas. That I know of. Who knows how many others have gone unheralded, eaten in the hunger of the moment, blessing the intestines of the faithful and the apostate alike????

In humble acknowledgement of this miraculous event I am going to grab my nickles and my Metformin and head down to El Nopal for lunch. This is clearly the Chosen Food. And who knows, perhaps even my Lourdes. I will leave my lancet and test strips outside the door of the lounge and go forth rejoicing.

Other than missing my favorite resteraunt (where I was putting their kids through college), I'm finding diabetes more a minor irritation than anything else, and that's only when it happens to cross my mind. I've lost weight, changed my eating habits and made better food choices, and it's been no great strain. I think having been a vegetarian hippie child helped because I already know how to 'do' healthy. Now it's just a question of finding a happy medium between 'reasonably tasty and low in dietary sugars' and healthy.

So what am I reading for nonfiction lately? A book on how to recreate the great mother sauces of French haute cuisine in the home kitchen. Yes, I saw the title ('The Sauciers' Apprentice'...oh, ha! so laugh the face of me!) on a shelf at a garage sale and dove on that action like a fullback. Outta my way bitches.

The first thing the author wants you to do is order 30 gallon stockpot with a tap from Williams Sonoma.

The next, cultivate a smoochy relationship with your local butcher. Now sadly enough, or fortuituously enough; however you want to view it, I already am on amiable terms with the man. Hint**: most men, you tell them they have beautiful meat? They'll view you in all future dealings with a friendlier eye. Yes I honestly said that to the guy. In the spirit of the moment, now, come on. I realized how it sounded about halfway home.

So. Anyway. Next? Invest in ungodly amounts of animal flesh. Beefy Deathberg? Check.

Finally, devote an entire weekend to simmering and skimming. Not a problem. Thats already part of my routine. Seriously, I take a weekend out every month or so and put up all my stocks, my salsas, etc soups and what have you to freeze.

I have most of the requirements already in place; but I must tell you that I will be rat fucked before I play around around with no huge ass stockpot. Never mind the expense; I'd have to stand on a stepstool to stir the thing. There's just no way I want something like that in my kitchen full of hot liquid, too heavy to lift.

You can tell I'm thinking about this, though, can't you. Yeah. 'Well, I could do it in the summer, outside, on a gas ring. Oo, better yet, I could pick up one of those big gas-fired beach boilers at a yard sale! I'm always running into those! And set up on the deck! And run a stock line from the kitchen out through the utility room...yeah...the washer and dryer are work height....I have good knives...'

Making a brown stock is only part un. Part deux involves all the extra flapulation of reducing it down to a demiglace, which is what I'd be doing ideally.
But hey! We'll be bathing in Bourguignonne for the rest of the year! And that doesn't sound like such a bad thing at all.

Update:
OH MY GOD ITS LIKE AN OMEN.
Just as I was getting up to go down to El Nopal? At that very instant? My Yummy Biker came home. Do you know what he had?
Never mind what he had.

Fine, he had a burrito por moi.
An UNSOLICITED BURRITO.

I must meditate, and pray.




*Q13 Fox News Seattle, Bill Wixie reporting, Tuesday October 17.

** I'm assuming the butcher is male here. It seems to be a standard. Proceed with caution. Straight ladies and men with fully functioning gaydar only. Otherwise, guys, I hope I don't have to tell you that if you go up to an American straight man who can bust down a hanging beef in under three minutes? Using only a knife and a steel? And drop the 'beautiful meat' line on him? Probably no.

mexican death sushi

The definition of the burrito

A Burrito is pretty much anything edible, folded up in a tortilla. Unless you flap the tortilla in half; that's called a taco. If you roll it into a tube shape, it's called a burrito. Or sometimes a soft taco. Unless you tuck in the ends AND heat it up in a frypan, thus returning it to 'burrito' status. If you stick fried brains into it, it's called a delicacy. If you deep fry it, it's called a chimichanga, which means 'female monkey'.

The abominations known as the 'wrap' sandwich and the burrito canape, and the instant constipation cure known as the breakfast burrito (which is McCheese, McEggproduct in a drum and McCrap strained out of the deep fryer rolled up in a McFlour McFrisbee) are not real burritoes. They are ersatz burritoes. Trust me.

My particular downfall is the bean and cheese burrito. I developed a fatal addiction to these in my latter vegetarian days, when I was single and working two maid jobs. You can live cheaply, thrive, work like a dog and never suffer a midday letdown on two generous-sized bean and cheese burritoes a day. I am living proof of that. You can also blow up like a goddamn hot air balloon if you continue to eat that way in addition to a diet that includes meat. I am fat diabetic proof of that.

You need:
1 flour tortilla
refried beans
cheddar cheese

necessary condiment: hot sauce

unnecessary condiments: salsa, guacamole, sour cream or abondigas soup
......or all of the above.

You dump the beans and cheese in the middle of the tortilla, roll it up into a little package,tuck the ends in, fry it up in a pan on all sides until the cheese starts to melt and the package is sealed shut, then consume in flurry of saliva and partially masticated protein, dipping the sodden, gnawed end intermittently into the condiment (s) of choice.

Food of the GODS, y'all.

Now, it sounds innocent enough, a burrito....until you deconstruct it.
You have:
1 flour tortilla = flour, water, lard. Cooked in lard. Reheated in lard.

Refried beans = water, pinto beans (and any combination of pintos and reds, kidneys, black, turtle, flor de mayo, soy, great northern, soldier, jacobs cattle....... my favorite being pintos, soy, black and flor de mayo)....raw onions, epezote, salt and lard

Cheddar cheese = whole cow milk, rennet, carrotene, salt, cheddar germs or whatever plague makes cheese 'cheddar'

...You may as well carve a hole in your chest and stuff one of these right through your aorta because it's basically a handheld infarction.

Then the condiments:
Sour cream = whole milk and plague bacteria
Guacamole =mashed avocados, lemon, salt (mayo, sour cream, crema mexicana, whole yogurt, chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, lime, salt, pepper, chile)
Hot sauce = hot chiles, vinegar, salt (lime, lemon, cilantro, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, lard, salt, beer, sugar, vodka, whiskey, corn syrup, red food coloring, tequila.....)
Salsa = tomatoes, onion, chiles, tomatillas, salt, pepper, cilantro, lime, (corn, beans, chicken stock, pumpkin seeds, pignola seeds)

Abondigas soup = minted beef meatballs, beef stock, carrots, celery, onion, epazote, colantro, dried chile, tomato
Obviously this is a dish in itself instead of a condiment, but I love it so much with burritoes that I dunk. And not just any burrito, either....a butterito. Which is exactly what it sounds like; a warm flour tortilla slathered in whipped butter and dunked into the soup.

I hope this clears up any confusion.

TOMORROW: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BURRITO AS GOD INTENDED IT AND A CRAPPY BURRITO THAT SUCKS AND IS STUPID AND MADE OUT OF BIRD POOP AND ROCKS WITH A HAIR STUCK TO IT, AND A PINECONE. AND SOME LINT.