Easy Tortilla Chips

I made lunch for my husband this morning, a Mexican feast with chicken tacos and tortilla chips. But rather than break out a bag of greasy chips, I whipped them up in the microwave.

In 2 minutes of cooking time, you can have crisp, low-fat corn tortilla chips! All you need is taco-sized corn tortillas. These are the flat discs of corn that you heat in the oven to make soft tacos, as opposed to a box of the already crisped taco shells. I can get a bag of 36 of the soft corn tortillas from my local Aldi for less than $1.50. You'll see that this will keep you in tortilla chips for a long time.

Here's what to do:

• Get two to four tortillas, depending on how hungry you are.
• If desired, cut the tortillas into triangles. Cut in half, stack the halves and cut those in half. (If you want, you can cut smaller by stacking the quarters and cutting them into half. Or, you could leave the tortillas whole to crumble in the end, if you're eating them with a tortilla soup, a taco salad or something similar.)
• Put the tortillas on a plate. This should be a Corelle plate (which I use), melamine or ceramic, as opposed to a paper plate or a foam one.
• Heat the tortilla pieces for 1 minute; turn them over and heat for another 30-60 seconds, or until crisp and dry from the steam created during cooking.

That's it! As I mentioned, you could crumble the hardened tortillas over tortilla soup or a taco salad, eat them with salsa as a snack (1/2 cup of a fat-free salsa is a generous portion), or make a nachos meal with reduced fat cheddar (1 oz., or 1/4 cup), fat-free sour cream (1/4 cup), veggie toppings and beans (pinto or black), grilled chicken or lean ground beef or turkey (3 oz.).

Buen provecho!