Caliente

When my week’s kind of crazy, I need something hot, filling, and nutritious. NOW. I don’t want to wait for the oven to finish pre-heating. And I certainly don’t want to bother making everything from scratch.

Or do I?

Let’s just say I was procrastinating a bit. Taxes, tow truck adventures, experiment planning, and lobbying for better health care packages make for an interesting week. An exciting (and potentially, fairly fulfilling) week, I admit, but I needed a little break. So I did what I do best — turn a potentially quick, healthy dinner into a three hour play session, starting with fresh, made-from-scratch corn tortillas, shaped ever so clumsily with my very own palms. And you know something? It was worth it. I’d give up my evening in a second for hot-off-the-pan tortillas, with a bit of melted cheese, a little snack to hold me over until the vegetables finally roasted into the perfect succulent sweetness that only a bit of patience can yield.

But the best part of this story? You can do this in pretty much no time at all, with a bit of preparation. You don’t have to muck about in your fridge, mixing this and that, like I did. Throw your vegetables in your toaster oven to roast, bake the squash ahead of time by simply cutting it in half and throwing it in a hot oven for an hour (or use a microwave, if you dare). And those tortillas? All they are are a bit of masa and water, mixed and shaped. You don’t have to make more than you need for dinner, and they cook up in minutes. Minutes!

And that’s only if you, like me, have no clue what you’re doing. Which, I assure you, only adds to the fun.