This week, I didn’t have much time for cooking and preparing a column. I had a cake to make for a friend so I was busy at the beginning of the week. That left me with little time to actually get this column together. So, I hit the pantry to see what I could find that would take little to no time and few ingredients AND ingredients I had on hand with no extra trip to the store. I had made a recent trip to Tulsa and Sam’s so I had lots of tortillas. Well, I often have things that I can throw on a tortilla from frozen chicken and shrimp to Nutella and bananas. Tortillas also can’t hold much so they rarely use many ingredients. So, tortillas it is!

A tortilla is a thin, flat, circular unleavened flatbread originally made from maize, hominy meal, but now also from wheat flour or even vegetables. The word tortilla actually comes from the Spanish word “torta” which means round cake! These days, at the store, you can find corn tortillas in white, yellow or blue and flour tortillas as well as spinach or tomato, cheese tortillas and even almond flour tortillas for those who can’t have gluten.

Corn tortillas were first made in what is now Mexico long before colonization came about, records have found at least as far back as 500 B.C. Wheat tortillas were created in India. Europeans visiting took the recipe back home. The Europeans in turn introduced wheat and the recipe for tortillas to the Americas and they have been popular ever since.

Fun Facts:

The typical Mexican family of four consumes more than 2 pounds of tortillas each day. The population of Mexico in 2019 was 127.6 million. That’s a lot of tortillas! Mexico does consume more corn tortillas though than flour and often they are freshly made.

Approximately 120 million tortillas are consumed yearly in the United States and we don’t even eat that many each day per person compared to Mexico! These are the second most popular baked product in the U.S., after white bread.

This week, I pulled out the tortillas and quickly made some things. I mean, if I am being honest, it was all in one night except the enchiladas so when I say quick, I mean it. Tortillas are so versatile it’s just as easy to use them to make a quick wrap or pizza as it is to make a quick dessert. Make your grocery list or just pull some ingredients out like I did and make do with what you have! Meet me in the kitchen this week for quick and easy recipes that taste pretty good!