Hopefully you all had a great Pie Lover’s Day, I know we did. But, as we tested out the different Toastilla pies from last week Rudy and I got into a serious discussion—well serious for our home.

You see, despite the cheese, pies and deliciousness of Toastilla our family really does eat healthy. But, it wasn’t until a good friend of ours in Brentwood—the next town over—mentioned to us that after eating Toastilla for a few weeks he began to lose weight, that we realized one key component to Toastilla, that was serendipitously thrown into our design. Toastilla happens to be the perfect size for a snack or small meal portion. And, as you know you can stuff it full of your own desires.

Now, let’s be fare for a moment. Neither Rudy, nor I are doctors, nor are we nutritionists. We want to throw that out there. But, what we do know is that portion control is a huge part of maintaining a healthy diet. Using Toastilla either as a snack or meal, can be a great way to manage your portion control—if done wisely.
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So, what does wisely mean? It means that if you put a small slice of banana in your Toastilla along will half a cup of sugar, you probably aren’t going out of your way to be healthy. But, if you mix some broccoli, chicken breast, bell peppers and some feta (mmm, feta), with a wheat tortilla, you are well on your way to improving your diet with vital nutrients and controlling your portion intake. 

​To get you started eating healthy with Toastilla, here are a few tips:

There is, of course, a lot more to weight loss such as healthy diet, exercise and everything else that goes into maintaining great overall health. But, as a quick snack or small meal, the Toastilla just happens to be the perfect portion size for just about anyone. 

Did you know that January 23 was National Pie Lover’s Day? Okay, okay, we know there will be a little kick-back here and can feel the debate mounting.

For millions of people March 14 is a popular and celebrated day of the pie. You know, pie…as in pi or 3.14. But, according to The American Pie Council (Yes, that’s a real thing) the celebration on January 23 began in 1986 to commemorate Crisco’s 75th anniversary of “serving foods to families everywhere.” This makes January 23 the official pie lover’s day and March 14 simply pie day.

Of course, pies can be savory as in chicken pot pie or they can be sweet (oh yeah!) as in blueberry, pecan and coconut cream. Whichever you prefer, we won’t judge you – unless you invite us to a pie eating contest, then we’re there!
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In love of National Pie Lover’s Day, we’d like to offer a few tasty pie Toastilla recipes for your judging pleasure!
Just because we know you’re eager to try these recipes out, we’ll make the recipe simple and provide our wrapping technique below. Additional tips before starting are:

You’ve heard us talk about Biscoff cookies before and that’s because they are A-MAZE-ING! We love them and often use them as a base in our sweet Toastilla recipes. And Rudy’s Blueberry Pie is no exception. We prefer to use fresh blueberries, but you can also use frozen if you let them thaw a bit. 

​Recipe:
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We prefer to break up the Biscoff cookies first and layer the center of the tortilla. Then in a bowl, mix about ½ cup of blueberries with a “dollup” ehem, a small spoonful, of blackberry preserves. We like to gently press the blueberries just enough to let some of the juices out and mix with the other ingredients. Add the honey for a bit of added sweetness and stir these all together. Then fill, fold and toast. Voila! Easy blueberry pie. 

​Pecan pie needs no introduction, but we’ll give you one anyway. Pecan pie is sweet, toasty, and warm. Just like smores in the fireplace on a cool night. Few pies are as homey as our pecan, and with a scoop of ice cream on the side you just might have a dream dessert. 

​Recipe:
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The first thing you want to do is to toast your chopped pecans on the stove with salted butter. This should only take a couple minutes on medium heat. Then add the brown sugar, corn syrup and dash of vanilla. Stir it and let it rest.

Next, break up the Biscoff cookies and layer the center of the tortilla. Then add your pecan mix to the Biscoff cookies. Fold and toast!
Once ready, let your pecan pie Toastilla sit for a minute while you add a scoop of vanilla bean or buttery pecan ice cream to the side. You’ll love it!

​In our house we love play-with-words. Chilly pie is called so, because it’s a delicious Toastilla pie to serve on a chilly day – well, it goes well on any day really.
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This is an amazingly simple recipe with only three ingredients and will probably have you coming back for more. Add a side of sour cream or nacho cheese to dip into and you’ll find that this recipe is great for watching the big game, cuddling up to watch the stars at night, or simply to play cards with the family. 

Recipe:

Break the crackers into a few pieces and layer in the center of the tortilla. Pour your preferred amount of chili and sprinkle with cheese.
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Fold and toast! 

​This really is an easy recipe and the best part is that there is a good chance you already have all the ingredients in your pantry or refrigerator. You can use canned chili, or as we do, you can make these Toastillas for lunch with left over chili from chili-night. 

We hope you enjoy these three recipes and as always, we’d love to hear from you on our contact page or the blog.

Hope you had a great Pie Lover’s Day!

​Dishes are great. Seriously, bowls, plates, plate-bowls. It’s embarrassing, but you can’t deny that it took you almost two hours at Bed Bath and Beyond eyeballing every piece of dinnerware you could find to pick out the perfect set. That being said, are you going to let your kids fill the minivan with ceramic plates and bowls? Probably not. Or, at least I hope not. Whether you are heading to a ball game or simply wandering around the house looking for your shoes, there is no denying that the portability of wrapped foods is second to none. No longer do you need to leave your food behind and wonder if the cat or dog is current licking your tasty wrapped dinner to an untimely death. Best of all, you don’t have to wash dishes! So, yeah, portability tops our list. 

​To be fair, being easy to dip was an unexpected thought for why people love wrapped foods. But, can you imagine and easier way to test out your favorite new peanut sauce, sriracha mayo or nacho cheese than a wrapped food? From Toastillas to egg rolls and pizza rolls, wrapped foods are a great way to combine a variety of foods in one place and see how well your sauce handles the combination. The wrap is usually pretty good at holding everything in as well as provides a great grip to your sauce. So, grab your Toastilla and dip away—you’ll thank us!

​You may have picked this up by now, but our family loves variety in our food and wrapped foods, ehem, Toastilla, offers more flexibility and variety than any food we could think of. You can actually hit every corner of the world inside a Toastilla and go back around dozens of times without finding an end. From pizza or spaghetti Toastillas to Cuban beans and rice, Caribbean Jerk and amazing Indian curries you can do nearly anything. While we do love all sorts of wrapped foods, we are, of course, partial to our Toastillas. 

This is our list:

1. Portability
2. Easy to Dip
3. Variety

​Leave a comment and let us know what your favorite thing is about wrapped foods. We’d love to hear from you!

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January 20th is National Cheese Lover’s Day! Cheese holds a special place in all our hearts from a light Gouda to the ever-popular toddler favorite (and mine) Mac & Cheese.

Who hasn’t had that middle-of-the night craving of a deliciously hot and oh-so ooey-gooey grilled cheese? You open your eyes in bed and glance around to make sure no one is looking. You tip-toe into the kitchen, pull out the griddle and in breezeless silence you grill up the most delicious sandwich ever! It’s that midnight rendezvous into the kitchen that teaches adults the ninja-like don’t-wake-the-baby skills that help us develop into amazing parents.

Cheese has been around for nearly 7,000 years which is a long time to not only perfect the trade, but also to develop, create and dabble into what is now well over 1,800 varieties of cheese available around the world—and those are the just the known varieties. That doesn’t include the hundreds of varieties that have been created in “old world” towns or even in your neighbor Rob’s basement. For an extensive list to blow your mind, check out Cheese.com – you’ll love it! As my grandmother had told me, cheese was first discovered by shepherds who would carry goat or sheep’s milk in dried out stomach “pouches.” Over time the milk would interact with natural rennet, curdle and separate the milk into whey and the first stage of cheese.

Over time, and we’re talking about 1,000 to 2,000 years, shepherds eventually began to process new varieties that were abundant with flavor and could match texture-for-texture with renaissance art. It is the variety of textures from creamy to hard, the saltiness, the tang and versatility that make cheese a global favorite and often a staple at the dinner table.

So, in celebration of National Cheese Lover’s Day we’d like to give you a few cheesy Toastilla favorites to serve up on one of the most important days of the year. 

There is something to be said about mingling salty and sweet on our palates. This delicious Toastilla mixes the saltiness of bacon and sharp cheddar with sweet apples and preserves or jam to liven up dinner.

While this makes for a great meal, we’ve found that this Toastilla also performs well as an appetizer for parties or when friends unexpectedly come knocking on the door—probably because they smell bacon wafting through the neighborhood. 

Directions:

1. Prepare bacon according to desired crispiness.
2. Spread the preserves in the center of the Toastilla in about a four-inch diameter.
3. Layer the pear.
4. Lay the sharp cheddar on the pear.
5. Lay the bacon on the cheddar.
6. Wrap toastilla per our instructions, making sure not to have any opening or holes in the tortilla and place into the Toastilla.
7. Place the Toastilla into toaster and cook on high for one cycle. 

Okay, so we’re going to let you in on a little American myth. Thomas Jefferson did not invent mac & cheese, he wasn’t the person to bring it to America, and (take a breath) he also wasn’t the first person to serve macaroni with or without cheese. So, then why is this little “fact” of American history shared at dinner by millions of people each year? While Jefferson didn’t invent mac & cheese what he did do is popularize the dish by frequently serving it at dinner. He also loved “macaroni” which he used as a common name for pasta. In fact, he obtained a "mould for making macaroni" while living in Paris.

This recipe combines the simplicity of creamy mac & cheese with the crispy love of bacon and a bit of heat with Sriracha. While Jefferson’s recipe may be a little different than you expect, we  have no doubt Jefferson would have loved this Toastilla recipe. 

​If you’re all about speed, which many Toastilla customers are, you can replace the macaroni and Velveeta process with Kraft mac & cheese. The single-serving cups are even faster!

Directions:

1. Prepare bacon according to desired crispiness.
2. Prepare macaroni noodles per box suggestion (we recommend going a little al dente.)
3. Once the macaroni is cooked and strained, add it back to the pot and along with the Velveeta cubes, milk, parmesan/romano, and dash of pepper. Put burner on low and stir until all ingredients are mixed, creamy and delish!
4. Layer the bacon in the center of the tortilla.
5. Top with 3-4 TBSP. of the mac and cheese.
6. Spritz the Sriracha per your heat preference.
7. Wrap toastilla per our instructions, making sure not to have any opening or holes in the tortilla and place into the Toastilla.
8. Place the Toastilla into toaster and cook on high for one cycle. 

​Have you ever tried warm cheesecake? Well, it tastes great! This Toastilla recipe mixes a simple cream cheese filling with our touch of a warm and cool dessert that is destined to make it’s way into your home and heart.  

Directions:

1. In a small mixing bowl use a fork to quickly mix crumbled graham crackers, cream cheese, sugar and coconut.
2. Cover and chill the mixture for about 20-30 minutes.
3. Add mixture to the tortilla.
4. Wrap toastilla per our instructions, making sure not to have any opening or holes in the tortilla and place into the Toastilla.
5. Place the toastilla into toaster and cook on ¾ heat for one cycle.
6. Once Toastilla is cooked, drizzle with caramel, and tops with fresh fruit, heavy whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon. 

Ready to start making these and many other recipes in your toaster? Get Toastilla today at www.toastilla.net/shop-our-store.

​As you can probably guess the Toastilla is a popular item in our kitchen. It helps us create versatile snacks, meals and desserts for nearly any taste—including the peculiar, unique and diverse that comes with a culinary explorer like my husband or any of our four children. We can pull the Toastilla out for last-minute needs, and when the kiddos are ready for college, guess what will be in their first care-package? While we’ve been using the Toastilla for months now, many newbies to our product are just happy to figure out the fill-limit for their favorite tortilla and to learn that perfect fold.
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But, how do you explore, branch out and become a Toastilla Master? First, and foremost, use your Toastilla. But, if you’re new, or looking for a few tips before testing your limits we’d like to provide a few suggestions for your filled toastillas. 

​“Hello, my name is…” Okay, so you don’t have to name your toaster, but understanding your toaster is important. Most toasters operate at a similar heat, but just because your friend tells you “high-heat” doesn’t mean that your toaster is the same. That might mean a slightly lower heat for your toaster—or higher.

Rule of thumb: Your finished tortilla will be slightly yellowish with brown grill marks across each side. After one or two Toastillas you will probably figure out your tortilla crispiness preference.
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You may also want to consider that frozen additions to your Toastilla may require two-high-heat-cycles through your toaster.

If you are like most people, your eyes are bigger than your tortilla. The bulkier the food, the more difficult to cook. So, whether you are adding meats, fruit, or veggies, cutting your food into thin slices or chopping them finely will be your best bet.
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We enjoy mixing veggies, meat and cheese together and remember anytime you add cheese it is going to melt and build a great cohesive mixture inside your Toastilla.

It’s always important to keep your contents inside of the Toastilla, so, using high-viscosity liquids may have some leakage. For example, if you were to add a thin balsamic dressing, and nothing for that balsamic to cling to (diced chicken, rice, veggies) then you might have some leakage.

We do provide instructions for folding which are helpful to ensure you won’t experience tortilla leakage on our website.

Occasionally, someone will ask, can I toast my Toastilla with butter, oil or anything else on the outside?

This can be a difficult question. We’ve seen Toastillas sprayed with oil and butter from a can that turn out well if they sit for a short period of time to allow absorption into the Toastilla. Some have even sprinkled salt after spraying.

This may provide a bit more flavor. However, you should always take into consideration flammability and the fact that your Toastilla will be near or potentially touching a high heat while cooking. 

The first thing to keep in mind is that for most recipes, your Toastilla will be hot. You will want to let your Toastilla sit for a couple minutes before eating.

Once your Toastilla has sat, there are nearly as many options for the outside of the Toastilla as the inside.

With savory Toastillas you can add thick cream sauces, salsa, veggies, fruit and beans. For sweet Toastillas, it is always fun to drizzle warm fudge, caramel, or top with fresh fruit, whipped cream, ice cream, powdered sugar, and cinnamon. 

Start using Toastilla today. Get yours at www.toastilla.net/shop-our-store.