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Thursday, January 21, 2016

Cooking Series

In my experience of living overseas I have realized that it's hard. I'm reminded of this again and again when I watch others who have newly arrived struggle with those same things that I did, and in some cases still do. There are some things that I've gotten used to, but other things I don't think I will ever get used to. There are some things that each day is step in my journey of life becoming "normal". One of these daily steps is cooking overseas. 

I'm not only talking about gathering all your ingredients from at least three different location or gathering your fresh produce from the local market or that you need to learn substitutes of foods/spices or how to make things from scratch... because all of these things are learned along the way. 

Now that I have more time on my hands I find myself looking up recipes online of copycat foods from home. For some reason I was stuck on the "ever delicious" Taco Bell. It's interesting because when we're home we make a "run for the border" because it's convenient not necessarily due to taste. But when you can't have something it becomes that much more delicious in your memories. Always satisfying, and never make you have to run to the toilet... 

So I decided that I was going to make a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Supreme at my home in Papua, Indonesia. 
 
Here are the ingredients:
Flour Tortilla
Refried Beans
Taco Seasoned Ground Beef
Nacho Cheese Sauce
Crunchy Corn Tortilla
Lettuce
Tomato
Sour Cream

Thankfully we had a few of these ingredients from care packages so didn't have to make everything from scratch, but if we make it in the future things would be made from scratch. 

Here are the things made from scratch:
Flour Tortillas (Our wonderful house helper makes these each week for us) 
Refried Beans (Pressure cooker to the rescue!!)
Sour Cream (1 Cup Heavy Cream mixed with 1 tablespoon White Vinegar, stir) 

Future items from scratch:
Nacho Cheese Sauce (Make a White Sauce and add cheese and spices)
*Corn Tortillas (I would have a hard time making this here, so I might request from some to be sent)

We also made Taco Bell Mexican Pizzas, which even with a great imagination left much to be desired. 

Heat your oven to 400 (or in our case as high as it would go) and let your corn tortillas crisp up for about 10 minutes. 

Cook your taco beef. 

Assemble your crunchwraps, and remember this is not Taco Bell so be okay with ugly crunchwraps! 

The taste of our homemade CrunchWrap was spot on! It didn't take that long to assemble after everything else was already made. 


 
Images by Freepik