The Back Roads Shortcut
It was a Tuesday, the kind of day that moves at highway speed. When dinner time rolled around, I was drained and irritable, ready to finally sit down and rest. I needed a simple meal that required almost nothing from me, no real thought, very little work. Taco Tuesday.
Not the traditional Mexican kind with long-simmered meats and corn tortillas pressed from fresh masa. No, ours is the familiar American version: ground beef, shredded cheese, flour tortillas ripped from a plastic package—the one many of us grew up with. Practical. Predictable.
A quick, simple meal. It’s not gourmet. The family won’t be excited about it, but it’s got some protein, some vegetables, and some carbs, and it tastes… fine. Good enough.
Good enough should be enough. That was the point.
There is a version of me who buys the tortillas and uses them. She values efficiency. She respects her own time. She does not roll dough on a Tuesday night.
I stand there looking at the ingredients, knowing we can be sitting at the table in 15 minutes. Go. Move. Get it done. But I can’t. I’m stuck. My body won’t cooperate. I just can’t do it. I stare at those ingredients and the tortillas stare back, taunting me.
It would be so easy. Tear open the plastic. Warm them. Call it dinner.
No one would complain.
Yes, I know they feel like congealed cardboard when I’m eating them, and I hate that they stick to the roof of my mouth. But it’s easy. It’s fine. It’s fine. Still, my hands won’t move. I sigh. So much for easy.
Because Taco Tuesday in our house isn't just dinner at the table.
It starts in the kitchen.
It’s flour dusting the counter.
A cast iron pan heating slowly on the stove.
The first tortilla puffing up, breathing into our weeknight. It blisters in spots, turns golden at the edges, and fills the kitchen with the smell of toasted flour.
Someone hovering, waiting to steal the first warm one from the stack.
There’s comfort in knowing this motion didn’t begin with me, that hands have been turning and stacking this kind of bread for generations. In other, warmer kitchens, far from my home in Massachusetts, flour tortillas are everyday bread, rolled and cooked without ceremony. For me, they’re not a routine, I didn’t learn how to make them until well into adulthood, from an online blog. But I crave that connection to something bigger than me. More intentional.
Fine. I’ll do it. Once the decision is made, my body releases its hold on my hands, and I reach for the tortillas and toss them back in the bread drawer. Maybe next time.
It’s a small, almost ridiculous act of defiance against convenience. Against the pace of the week. Against the version of me who just wants to be done. This is our time together; it’s not a box to be checked off. It’s a way of saying that this matters.
I reach for the flour.
It’s hardly a recipe at all, just flour, warm water, a pinch of salt, and a little shortening. I always have the ingredients in the pantry anyway. It’s not hard. The dough comes together with a fork and a few turns on the counter until it’s soft and pliable under my palms. It rests, unhurried, in a house that doesn’t often move that slowly. Later, I roll it out, thin and imperfect, as the cast iron pan heats on the stove. When the first round hits the skillet, it hisses softly as steam releases and fills with air, carrying the promise of a meal that leaves us not just full, but satiated.
The tortillas come out of the pan soft and pliable, strong enough to hold plenty of juicy filling, but still melt in your mouth with that first bite. Somehow, those simple ingredients can change the whole night, transforming a quick meal into one that leaves us lingering at the table long after it’s done.
Our modern lives are filled to the brim with activity. Between careers, kids’ sports schedules, laundry, doctor’s appointments, the dog’s vaccinations, and the steady hum of bills and responsibilities, it’s hard to make time for anything extra. It’s all I can do to sit down at night—finally—and dissociate with a screen.
By then, I’ve already made too many decisions. I have no bandwidth left for creativity. So when it comes time to plan food for the week, decision fatigue wins. I jot down the first five meals that come to mind and the absolute easiest way to make them. Some weeks, I’m in survival mode and I have to do whatever is going to be simple and fast. So store-bought tortillas make sense.
It’s a shortcut. Or, at least, that’s what we call it. The fastest way. The most efficient way.
Growing up in rural Western Pennsylvania, there were a lot of back roads. When my dad drove, we always took the slow, meandering route, the one that went under the railroad tracks and around the lake, where you had to slow down around the curves in case another car was coming from the opposite direction because the road was only really wide enough for a car and a half.
He always called it a shortcut.
It used to frustrate me to no end when I was a teenager. I had places to be! He liked to tell me stories about his high school days, about who lived in various houses. We would reminisce about our old cat Smoky as we passed the retired vet’s house and honk as we went by Uncle Pat’s home, marveling at the freshly painted American flag on his barn. My dad insisted that this was a shortcut. It might take twice as long, but technically it was a mile shorter.
This is the type of shortcut that makes space. It gave us time together, for shared stories, the details that would have slipped right past us at highway speeds. It wasn’t faster, but it was time well spent. I didn’t know then how much I would miss those extra miles. I would gladly take that “shortcut” with him again if I had the chance, no matter how late it made us.
And maybe that’s what I’m really reaching for when I stuff those store-bought tortillas back into the drawer. A homemade tortilla is my Tuesday night back road, my choice to be present instead of efficient.
Some nights, convenience keeps us afloat. Some weeks, it’s the only way dinner happens at all. Convenience isn’t the villain. Indifference is.
So in my kitchen, I’ll use the pre-shredded cheese, but I will spend my time and energy investing in moments of connection.
I’ll start the dough, let it rest, and settle in for a game of Boggle with my son. With a five-minute timer, we can get in three rounds and let the day loosen its grip. As I roll out the tortillas, my daughter will inevitably hop up on the counter and fill me in on her classes, catch me up on the latest tea about who Max is dating, and debate the merits of various college programs.
As I put the first tortilla in the pan and it begins to puff, my husband will come in to start sautéing the onions and browning the ground beef. And without planning it, without being highly structured and efficient, instead of having food on the table to be eaten quickly, I’ll have my entire family gathered together in the kitchen, laughing and talking and stealing bites of food. This is the shortcut I’m looking for.
I don’t make homemade tortillas to impress anyone. I don’t make them because I feel like I’m supposed to. I don’t even make them because they taste better (but they really do!). I make homemade tortillas for taco night because a little flour and water can show love and attention in ways I sometimes fall short. There’s a difference between feeding people and caring for them. But sometimes, if you plan your route right, you can do both.
So I reach for the flour.
Homemade Flour Tortillas
Yields 8–10 tortillas
Ingredients
- 2½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- ⅓ cup vegetable shortening
- 1 cup very warm water
Instructions
- In a large bowl, whisk flour and salt. Cut in the shortening with a fork until crumbly. Stir in the warm water until a shaggy dough forms.
- Turn onto a floured surface. Knead for 3–4 minutes until smooth.
- Divide into 10 balls. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 15–20 minutes.
- Roll each ball into a 6-inch circle. Cook in a preheated cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat for 30–45 seconds per side until bubbly and charred in spots.