Day 5: Peace in the Valley

Day 5 was fun day! Isn't that amazing?? We are so blessed: five days into living solely on our home storage and we get to have fun with our supplies without worry.

We made a pumpkin spice and white chocolate bundt cake, DD19 made vegan brownies, and researched how to make tortillas without shortening or lard since she won't use lard and she used the last of the vegan shortening to make cookies a week ago. I have long wanted to get a tortilla press (I know I know. Santa Ana California was just minutes away and I never bothered), simply because "in the day" I think it will be a lot easier to make tortillas than full on bread.

Bundt Cake

1 box of cake mix
1 box of instant pudding mix
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1/2 to 1 cup sour cream*
1 T butter (this is to coat pan, I use spray)
sprinkling of flour (to coat pan)

Whisk water, oil, eggs and sugar together. Add cake mix, pudding, whisk together. Add sour cream and whisk til blended. note:  we have found that if you are using "pudding in the mix" cake mix, then you need to drop the sour cream addition down to a half cup, otherwise the cake has way too much moisture and it is soggy.

Cook bundt cake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes, check to verify it's done. note: when we use a silicone bundt pan we have to bake this for at least 65-75 minutes. When we used stoneware, it was 60 minutes. Silicone doesn't transfer heat to aid in baking. My friend Teri notes that you need to rub real butter all over the metal/stoneware bundt pan and then dust with flour in order to get your cake to come out cleanly from the pan.

Vegan Tortillas without shortening

1 cup whole grain flour (DD used white wheat, it's what we have)
2 T olive oil
1/4 c. water
dash of salt
flour or oil for surface kneading

1. Mix all ingredients in bowl, if too dry add a bit more water
2. Split into 4 balls
3. Roll out each ball until desired thin-ness
4. "flash cook" the tortillas: high heated pan (no oil needed), cooked quickly. obviously cast iron works best, but any pan will do. fry tortillas for about 30 seconds on each side but it's not a hard and fast time.

DD19 made these but didn't roll them out quite thin enough (gotta get that press lol!) but they were still good. I like it because it uses ingredients we normally have on hand as part of our food storage.

Today's blogpost is really short because (drum roll here): nothing disastrous happened. Isn't that wonderful? Day 5 Life Lesson: Our preparations allow us to live life peacefully. 

Knock on wood.

Vaya con Dios.