Gluten Free Tortillas (How To)

            My family is gluten free… kind of.  Myra discovered a number of years ago that she was allergic.  She was experiencing flu-like symptoms and was often very groggy in the evening.  At the recommendation of an acquaintance who was allergic to gluten, she stopped eating gluten for a short period of time and discovered that her symptoms went away.  Any time she eats gluten now, her head gets stopped up, she feels groggy, and not fully herself.  So, no gluten for her.

            Ellen is currently struggling with eczema, which it turns out half of the population of kids in Unalakleet have gone through as every parent has a story of battling itchy kids.  Gluten can be a possible irritant as it can cause inflammation.  So, she is now off gluten.

            Dad… well, Dad does not feel like sitting in a dark closet eating toast by himself, and though I am not entirely off of gluten (the school had left-over cinnamon rolls the other day that called my name from across the hall), I have greatly reduced my intake.  In doing so, I have lost almost 15 pounds, and Myra is very supportive of the idea of me never eating gluten again.  I guess those eight pieces of bread I ate every day spread across three meals and snacks had an impact on a body no longer swimming distances measured in miles.

            So… gluten free.  For a baker who is used to traditional whole wheat and white flour, gluten-free flour can be a lot like working with wallpaper paste.  It acts nothing like its red-headed step-sibling (sure feels like the correct title in a world going gluten free): gluten flour.  It has none of the binding, malleable characteristics that gluten gives to flour. 

            Though store-bought gluten free products are getting better than the cardboard that was originally sold and labeled gluten free, they still have a long way to go.  Corn tortillas from the store have never been what I would call palatable, and gluten free flour tortillas might as well be just titled what they really are: rice cakes.  They are brittle and flavorless.

            I used to really enjoy making whole-wheat tortillas before my family stopped digesting them.  The whole-wheat made for a great texture, and the flavor of the fresh tortillas straight from the pan were such that a little butter and they could be eaten by themselves.  I went into a mini-mourning when we decided to take Ellen off of gluten.

I just throw it all in together

            It was worth one more try, and that is when I stumbled across this recipe:

            2 cups all-purpose gluten free flour (We use Pamelas)

            1/3 cup Crisco

            2 ¼ t yeast

            ¼ t salt

            1 C water

Our kitchen power tool

            A stand-up mixer is not necessary for this recipe, but we have one, and so why not.  It is like my power tool for the kitchen (insert Tim the Toolman Taylor man-grunt here).  I put all of the ingredients into my mixer bowl at once and gradually beat them together at a low speed with the paddle attachment.  As the mix becomes more moist, I increase the speed on my Kitchen Aid to 2 or 3 and allow it to mix until it clumps into one large ball around the paddle.

Dough should be clumped in a ball once fully mixed.

            At this point, I preheat my skillet on medium low heat.  No oil is really needed in the pan as the Crisco aids in keeping the tortillas from sticking.  In this go around as I cooked these tortillas, Myra had added some olive oil to the pan to cook what we were going to use for a filling before discovering I needed the pan.  I left the oil in.

            We have two pieces of circular parchment paper that we just keep below our sink.  They are our tortilla parchment papers.  I found a round pot that would fit easily into our skillet, traced it onto the parchment papers and cut them out.  They help me size the tortillas for the pan, and with the gluten free flour that can sometimes be sticky, they help me to press out the tortilla without sticking them to the rolling pin or the pot bottom (I have a redneck press system that I like).

            For the pan I am using, I take and make a ball of dough a little larger than a golf ball and definitely smaller than a racquet ball.  I place the ball in the middle of one of my parchment paper rounds, flatten the dough a little with my hand, and then place the other parchment round on top.  I then use a pot (the same I used to make the parchment rounds) and press the dough with the pot and my body weight.  I shimmy the pot a little in a circular turning motion to aid in pressing out the dough.  This makes a perfectly round tortilla.  If it is not as thin as I would like, I go over it a couple times evenly with a rolling pin trying to keep its round shape.  I do have a tortilla press that permanently lives in our cupboards and never comes out.

I used the pot for a pattern for my parchment paper rounds and then as a tortilla press

            I peel one of the parchment papers and then place the tortilla dough side down into the pan while still stuck to the other piece of parchment.  As the tortilla cooks, it will release itself from the paper which will easily pull away. 

            I cook the tortilla around a minute per side (experiment with this as too done becomes less malleable… they don’t take long to cook and so I have never accidentally eaten a raw one).  Fresh off the pan, they are malleable, and way better flavored than their store-bought counterparts.

Finished product

            Left overs, if we have any, are put into a ziplock once they are cool, and placed in the fridge.  I have never tried freezing them, but guess it could be done the same way.  Honestly, with a three-year-old who steals them off the plate as soon as they come off the pan, storage has never been an issue.  Sometimes we make a batch of dough up and place it in the fridge in a airproof container uncooked, and then pull the dough out and fry up fresh ones as needed.  We have left uncooked dough in the fridge for a week with no problems.

            We have used these tortillas as taco and burrito shells, enchiladas, quesadillas, and just spread butter on them and eaten them hot.

            A whole-wheat gluten filled tortilla they are not, but for those who can’t digest gluten, that is precisely the point.

Tortilla thief

Politically Incorrect History

           In 1940s Nome, Alaska, a little Eskimo boy ran from his side of the segregated school playground to no-man’s land in the middle and pointed and yelled to a little white boy of about his age on the other side, “Aziuqpaqtutin!”  (You’re a bad boy).

            In return, the little white boy looked at him and yelled, “Ilvituaq.”  (You too).

           

            Sixty years later found me standing in the kitchen of a house in Unalakleet.          

“You’re not a bad guy for a white man,” rolled off of the elder woman’s lips with a smile as she looked up at me.

            Growing up in rural northern Michigan, moving to Alaska, and falling in love with an Inupiaq woman left me in pretty alien territory.

            Before my mind could stop my tongue, “You’re not a bad lady for an Eskimo woman,” rolled off my lips with a smile and we both laughed warmly together.

            And so was the first meeting with the mom of my then girlfriend.

            The daughter and I became closer and so there were many more meetings in the same kitchen.  Her mom and I became closer too.

            “I almost married a white, army man once,” she revealed.  “My mom told me that she wanted to be able to talk with my husband in her language and so I should not marry him.  He was very sad when he went away,” she ended quietly. “I married a Siberian Yupik, and he couldn’t speak the same language anyway,” she smiled remembering.

            “Ellen,” I said, “I would like to marry your daughter.”

            “That would be okay.”

            “I understand in your husband’s culture the young man is supposed to work for his wife’s mother and father for a year,” I said.

            “When we got married,” she answered, “Howard did not work for me since that was not my family’s way.  Since I was a cheap bride, Myra will be too.”

            “May I marry your daughter,” I asked to be sure of her answer.

            “Just don’t move my daughter too far away from me.”

            Present day and there is a little Ellen running around the living room as Grandma Ellen tells her stories, “I don’t know about the little Eskimo boy, but last I knew, the little white boy was still living in Nome.  His wife has died, but he is still there,” Ellen recounts.

Segregation was still the way of the land in Alaska in the 1940s.  Ellen, who lived it refers to it as “the racist times.”  Her cousin Maggie had been on the playground on that day and saw the interaction.

            “There was a half-breed woman and an army guy who went to the theater.  He didn’t know, but they were sitting in the white section,” Ellen continues on the same theme.  “They kicked them out.”

            “Menadelook tried to help during those days,” she emphasizes since names have meanings and she gave a lot of thought to it before naming me after this man, her uncle.  “He built schools, he was a teacher, he helped people.”

            Oral tradition is cyclical and stories are repeated many times to assure they are told correctly, and so Ellen returns to the story she started with.

            “Aziuqpaqtutin!:  You’re a bad boy,” Ellen repeats.  “Ilvituaq: You too… the little Eskimo boy wasn’t expecting that,” she smiles.

             And, I write it down so that, though some cycles should come to an end, this story will continue and the story cycle will go on.

Ellen and Ellen

           

Ellen's First Moose Hunt

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Going on a moose hunt

“Ooouurghhh,” I grunted from the edge of a grass lake.

            “I heard that sound,” came the excited yell of the three-year-old working hard to catch up to her dad.

            “That was me,” I loudly whispered (oxymoronic, but everyone has done a loud whisper to a toddler at least once).

            “Oh, are we being quiet?” she yelled again.

            We did not bring her for her hunting skills, her ability to be quiet, or for an extra back to carry out meat should we shoot a moose.  In all honesty, for most of the lakes and through all of the willows, she was carried: a thirty-pound practice round of what it would be like to pack a moose out of the places we carted her in and out of.

            “We’re being quiet,” I leaned over and whispered in a hushed tone now that she was holding on to my leg.

            “Oh,” she whispered, “are we looking for a moose?” excitement in her voice.  “What are we going to do once we find one?” she continued.

            “Well, I was kind of hoping we could convince him to come home with us,” I smiled.

            “So we can eat him?” she laughed.  “We’re going to find a moose and eat him.”

            Even at three she understands where meat comes from and if a person can be considered an avid outdoorswoman and hunter at such a young age, Ellen is one for sure.  After all, she has traveled multiple hours up the Unalakleet River by open river boat in the fall to camp in the wild out of the hope that we might find a moose and convince him to come home with us.

            Just the act of getting all three of us up the river was a feat.  I am not sure who had the harder, more stressful job: Myra driving our sixteen-foot boat through miles of shallow rocky bends or me keeping Ellen inside of that boat.  It felt like I had hooked a big fish and was trying to keep him on the line as I had one finger looped through the webbing of Ellen’s lifejacket for the three hours it took to get from boat launch to campsite.  In the midst of all of the action, there was laughing, yelling, and crying no matter how hard I tried to keep my emotions under control.  Myra was cool at the controls as she read and navigated a part of the river none of us had been in before.

            “Ooouurghhh,” I grunted again.

            Ellen quietly laughed this time as she looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

            “Okay, you call then,” I encouraged.

            “Ooohhhh,” she called.

            We both laughed and I lifted her and walked back to the boat where Myra was waiting.

            “No luck?” Myra asked.

            “No luck,” Ellen answered.

             Back at camp, Myra and I scavenged for wood for a fire.  Small dead spruce branches were abundant and added to a couple of decent-sized dead willow trunks made for a pleasingly warm blaze to dry out socks and take the chill off.  Ellen danced about while Myra and I sat enjoying the quiet, as quiet as nature gets with a three-year-old.

            Ellen made her way to the edge of camp and the trail that headed to the neighbor’s site.

            “Where are you going?” Myra asked.

            “I’m just walking,” was her answer as she faced us and stepped backward stealthily back into the woods.

            “Bub, now is not the time to go visiting,” I said as she continued to inch away, “I bet our neighbors are getting ready for bed.”

            “Do you think their dog is getting ready for bed?” she asked and revealed her motive.

            “I bet their dog already is in bed,” was the quick response from a savvy mom.

            “How about their swing?”

            “ELLEN,” came the chorus of mom and dad together.

            “Fine,” and she made her way back to the fire.

            Bedtime was easier than most nights at home as the fresh air did Ellen in.  She was the first to sleep, but then also the first awake in the morning.

            “Good morning Mom,” was how both parents awoke.

            We held our ground though and pretended to continue to sleep.  The fresh air had done us in as well, and our bodies don’t recover as quickly as hers anymore.

            “I have to poop and pee!” was more than effective at getting me out of bed and effectively started my day.

            Coffee, blueberry buckle, dry clothes, and then back on the river and to the places that we checked that looked moose-y the day before, Ellen still helping to look for a moose to eat, and still being carried in and out.

            At the last spot of the day, I stepped down off of the top of the bank to a clay lump a foot down, Ellen cradled in my right arm.  When my rubber boot made contact with the clay, it just continued going in an upward arc toward heaven and my body continued downward.

            “Agghhhhh!” I landed with the top half of my back over the clay mound and just laid there half groaning for a while.  I really couldn’t say anything else, Ellen still safely in my right arm, wind completely knocked out of my body, and so I took that opportunity to mentally check through the bones in my spine and rib cage.  Seemed like there should be a lot more pain if something was broken, but instead, when I got up, I noticed that my back had pleasantly popped in three or four places and I could stand taller and straighter.

            “Are you okay?” came Myra’s concerned voice.

            “Wow, blue collar chiropractor.  My back feels amazing.  Hurt when I landed, but feels great now,” and we loaded into the boat.

            We packed up camp and headed back to town, the whole return trip pretty uneventful aside from a couple of shallow spots along the way that almost stopped the boat.  We stopped about an hour (at the slow rate we were traveling) outside of Unalakleet at a gravel bar for snacks and coffee.

            “I’m going to get some juice,” Ellen said, climbing back into the boat.

            Juice box in hand, she threw her leg over the side of the boat and began a slow fall that she halted, if only momentarily, by snagging the gunnel in the crook of her left elbow and by the toes of her left foot.

            “I’m getting wet!” she hollered as her juice box holding hand submerged in the shallow water below her horizontal dangling body.

            I don’t really remember getting up or crossing the fifteen feet of beach to catch her before she fell into the river, but all three of us were laughing as I carried her back to our picnic spot on the gravel bar.

            “I got my juice box wet,” she complained.

            Ellen fell asleep on the ride home.  I gently put her in the front seat of the car while Myra drove the boat onto the trailer.  It had been a very full weekend for a little girl.

            We never did see a moose that we could shoot, but I guess that never really was the point for taking our young daughter all those miles up the river in the first place. 

A practice round.