>In part, jmcquown wrote:
>searched high and low for flour tortillas
>to make quesadillas...found them with
>the bread. Okay, bread... tortillas; I
>suppose it makes sense, kinda.

>A bit of adavid.smith adding:
>The three grocery stores where I do
>most of my shopping keep their tortillas
>in different places.
On each of the three immediate Sundays preceding the Marine Corps Ball
each year, and should you care to travel, you could have bought your
tortillas right here in my Twentynine Palms, California patio.

While enjoying cooking with a dear Mexican family for several years in
Tucson, Arizona, I learned to roast fresh made tortillas atop their
(still in use today) wood stove. The torts that this 4'8" mother made
were a good two feet in diameter, and were done without a rolling pin,
stretched round entirely by hand. Being good with my hands, this
"forming" of the torts did come easy to me, and the family of 12 enjoyed
watching this "gringa" learn quickly the task that none of their
siblings could be bothered with. A few years went by before one of my
Marines wanting those huge tortillas he'd grown up with came up with a
solution for the "griddle" a common kitchen stove could use. He made me
two "comals" with welded on side handles, using the tops of some sort of
55 gallon metal containers that are about 3/8" thick. With putting each
comal covering two burners stovetop, and having one of the Marines
roasting with the patio's then extra stove, we could make many dozens
throughout a weekend marathon, with the insistence of a "switch places"
to come about so that I was in the patio stretching the last of the
dough during sales on Sunday afternoons while more were roasted.

Because of the funding reasoning, "it was no problem at all to sell
these puppies for $12 per dozen, with all proceeds going to the Marine's
funding pot used to help out the lower ranked youngsters purchase their
USMC Ball tickets. Then, come Ball night, my "Nana's House" home was
freely packed with more than a dozen kids to spend the night while their
USMC parents enjoyed the always several miles away Ball. The only sort
of restriction to my no-charge caring for the kids overnight was to have
no children still in diapers.

I did this for seven years each September/November, and do still have
one of the comals hanging out in the garage. But it's been well over a
dozen years since I've used it, or even made one single tortilla. Now I
buy them, but only from a wee store that sells just fresh made ones,
along with tamales, and the menudo (my mouth will never feel, much less
chew!).

Picky ~JA~