Let's taco 'bout it!

/image tacocat

1. Yes.
2. Torn, restaurants have good ones, but those gas station taco spots are pretty awesome as well.
3. Just shy of a million.
4. No it is a delivery vehicle filled with deliciousness.

Favorite fillings? Beef, al pastor, carnitas…ooohhhhh maybe barbacoa

Best place to get them? Authentic restaurant with homemade tortillas

How many can you eat? Two, maybe three…but I would like to have more

Is a taco a sandwich? Maybe a sideways sandwich!!!

I get mine at the restaurant inside a Mexican grocery store a few miles away. They get very busy around lunch time, but my timing is flexible. I’m usually the only English first speaker in there. The women who work there are patient and helpful when I try to speak Spanish.

I don’t think they have flour tortillas. They have soft corn ones they make at their other location. The grocery store also sells balls of masa made there, so I can make my own tortillas at home.

This summer they had fish and shrimp tacos. I only got two of those. They were filling. They put lettuce and avocado on those, which they don’t on the regular ones.

Usually I get three normal tacos, most often al pastor and/or carnitas, but sometimes asada or pollo. The regular tacos are $1.95

They make their own spicy cebolla en escabeche, which i love.

There’s a trendy hipster taco place that just opened a location a few blocks from my house. Their tacos are very good, but they cost twice as much.

Apparently it is also national vodka day
http://www.nationalvodkaday.com/
Shouldn’t it be national tequila day?

Want truly authentic food from Mexico? The best local and regional cooking for the last 5 decades or so?

Try Diana Kennedy. She has been compared to Julia Child, James Beard, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, and other notably food archivists and writers.

She is still going at age 96, having spent the many previous decades chasing the best local and home cooking in Mexico; during a time when food there was made in the household or locally, using well understood methods and real and natural local ingredients.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Kennedy

Diana Kennedy (born 3 March 1923)[1] is an authority on Mexican cooking known for her nine books on the subject, including The Cuisines of Mexico, which started changing how Americans view Mexican cooking. Her work is the basis of much of the work of Mexican chefs in the United States. Her cookbooks are distinctive because they are based on her fifty years of traveling Mexico, interviewing and learning from cooks of all kinds in the country, and from just about every region.

…

During her first years in Mexico City with her husband in the late 1950s,[3] she learned quickly that the best food in Mexico was not in fancy restaurants but rather in markets, traditional family restaurants called “fondas” and in homes.[4] In addition, she was impressed with what she saw in local, traditional markets.[12] She also came to appreciate that recipes varies from region to region, traveling with her husband when he was on assignment, and he would collect recipes when she could not accompany him.[3][6][8] In Mexico City, she asked her friends about cooking these dishes, and was referred to their maids. These maids then encouraged her to visit their villages, which she has done since.[8] Kennedy also began researching documentation on Mexican cuisine, and credits the work of Josefina Velázquez de León as a pioneer, who had done similar work collecting recipes by visiting church groups.[6] Kennedy’s focus became the food that was not documented, such as that found in villages, markets and homes, eventually to preserve native ingredients and traditional recipes being lost as Mexicans move from rural areas to urban centers.[10]

…

Her initial influence is the work of Josefina Velázquez de León, but credits much of her writing style to the work of English cookbook author Elizabeth David.[3][6] Kennedy does not consider herself a writer, but rather as someone who documents was she has seen in about fifty years of traveling Mexico, including remote areas, to talk to cooks of all kinds.[11] She finances her own book research and travels,[5][13] often sleeping in her old Nissan truck.[11] She prefers the food of central and southern Mexico, which is more complex and varied.[5] She has registered a wide variety of edible plants,[1][3] and include more exotic recipes such as those using brains, iguanas, insects and even whole animals such as oxen.[14] She regularly interviews and cooks with all kinds of cooks, but especially those from rural areas, cooking for family and friends. She even apprenticed in a bakery in Mexico City to learn the all-male trade.[8] Her preference for traditional home cooking means that her books revolve around foods made with corn dough and even has an entire book dedicated to tortillas.[9] Her insistence on field research distinguishes her books for the stories they tell related to food and her travels.[8] It also has led to unconventional formats. The Oaxaca book is not divided by types of dishes but rather the eleven regions of the state.[11]

Her work has made her one of the foremost authorities on Mexican cuisine,[1] not only in authentic ingredients and techniques, but the loss and disuse of various ingredients as Mexico shifts from a primarily rural to primarily urban society. One loss is the use of local and regional produce.[1] “As far as I can see,” says Kennedy, “I write oral history that is disappearing with climate change, agribusiness, and loss of cultivated lands. In the past people had a sense of taste and a sense of where they came from. They were conscious of what they were eating and what they consumed and about not wasting.”[13] In the introduction of Oaxaca al Gusto, Kennedy writes, “Trying to record the ethnic foods as well as the more sophisticated recipes of the urban centers presented an enormous challenge and responsibility … I am sure that if I had known what it would entail to travel almost constantly through the year, and often uncomfortably, to research, record, photograph and then cook and eat over three hundred recipes, I might never have had the courage to start the project in the first place.”[11]

The entire Wikipedia article is well worth the read.

/image “the cuisines of Mexico

(One of her many books)

Those who live near or visit Austin might want to visit the restaurant, Fonda San Miguel, owned by her friends, where she comes to lecture and demonstrate.

The cuisines she spent her life chasing are falling away now; agribusiness and “food from chemists and factories, optimized for profitability and shelf life” are taking over the table there as they are here.

She has kept extensive notes, and her researches and archival works are preserved in large collections at the Diana Kennedy Center in Mexico, and in large donated collections of notes at UT Austin and UT San Antonio.

/image “Fonda San Migue

/image Diana Kennedy

And now I am ordering tacos for dinner. So, thanks for that!

How many can you eat?

/giphy “millions of tacos”

Casey’s large taco pizza is on sale this month for $13.99, but today are $12 if you order online or in-app and use the code TACO.