Cooking With Mom: Simple Flour Tortilla Pizzas!
I was blessed to be raised by a mother and grandmother who were EXCELLENT cooks and taught me everything they knew. Sundays after church we always had dinner at my aunt Lizzy and uncle Bill’s house, and I remember walking in and seeing homemade egg noodles drying on Lizzy’s counter. Her homemade chicken and noodles were LEGENDARY! It is memories like these that motivate me to not only hone my own cooking skills, but to pass those skills down to my boys. Kids these days are not being taught these skills. If they are not being taught at home, they surely are not being taught in school! I always tell my husband that cooking seems to be turning into a lost art. And when I say cooking, I am not referring to Hamburger Helper, or packaged cake mixes. I’m talking about knowing how to make bread from scratch, or how to make homemade pasta, or how to make a roux and turn it into either a gravy or cheese sauce, or understanding why it’s important to sear a roast before putting in a slow cooker, or knowing all the things you can make from carrots, onions, and celery. I could go on and on. When it comes to cooking, it is truly a passion of mine! I love it, I love everything about it. I love testing recipes, I love surprising other moms with dinner, I love entertaining..any excuse to cook for others..I’m there!
This year we decided to go back to home schooling our two boys. One night during dinner, I was discussing homeschool curriculums with my husband. While talking, our oldest son was ooo-ing and aww-ing over the turkey and noodles I had made. He’s making comments like, “Mom this is sooo good! You need to teach me to cook like this!” And his comment really struck me. Here I was worried about teaching them math, language, and history, and had not placed an emphasis on life skills. So as I typed out our home school schedule that following week, I decided to set aside every Friday to teach things like cooking. I even created a 3-ring binder called “Mom’s Recipes.” I intend to keep adding recipes to this binder for as long as I’m on this earth.
Today was our first day cooking together, and the recipe was simple. Flour tortilla pizzas. I showed the boys how to take a simple flour tortilla (also called a soft taco shell), spread some pizza sauce on it, sprinkle cheese and pepperoni, and bake it in the air fryer for 8 minutes. It was a simple recipe, but it was the beginnings of teaching them how to follow a recipe and operate simple kitchen equipment. Next week is making scrambled eggs and bacon! By the time my boys graduate high school, it is my goal that they not only have a well-rounded education, but that both of them can walk into a pantry, see a bag of flour, some eggs, and some tomato sauce, and know that they can have homemade pasta on the table within 30 minutes.
