Thursday, March 26, 2009

An Inconvenient Food

I confess: I love tacos.

I mean, who doesn't, right? Who doesn't love the crispy shell, the warm, succulent meat, the crisp lettuce, tangy tomato, and melty cheese? What's not to love about that?

I'll tell you what's not to love about that: dignity. One cannot consume a hard-shell taco with dignity.

Today, our school cafeteria featured hard-shelled tacos for lunch. I recieved a glop of meat (two dollops = one glop), two shells, and a thimble of cheez. I have not misspelled "cheese." What I received was, in fact, cheez, a yellow, tasteless, soft substance that is impervious to the elements and chuckles audibly when sprinkled on food.

I carefully spooned a dollop of meat into the first shell, said a prayer, and took a bite.

KABOOM!

As I'm picking bits of taco shell out of my Andy Rooney-like eyebrows, the question occurs: who thought this was a good idea? Let's take greasy meat and assorted condiments, put them inside something so hard and brittle it barely holds together, and then make it large enough to require at least 8-11 bites to consume in its entirety. It sounds like a joke. A hidden camera prank, perhaps.

Wouldn't bite-size taco shells be neat? Just a mini shell, enough to hold about a teaspoon of meat, that you could load up and stuff in your mouth all at once? That would be great. And the time it would take you to build each taco would stop you from wolfing the whole thing down so quickly.

Of course, you can do soft tacos. Wimp. But here in Texas, we know the way tacos ought to be done. If you're in no danger from shrapnel when eating with a friend, it just ain't tacos.

I can't wait to see if my afternoon students are picking shells out of their eyebrows, too.

6 comments:

Kristina P. said...

I do love hard tacos, but like you, it creates a mess.

Barbaloot said...

I've made it a point to never get tacos on dates---cuz yeah, it doesn't end well.

Boy Mom said...

Even worse is Taco Salad, on a paper plate, balanced on you knees, while you try to spear tortilla chips and kidney beans with a plastic fork, at the family reunion. Unless of course you get to sit at the kiddie table and use your hands.

I love your take on life ;-)

Jill @ Sneaky Momma said...

We tend to eat our take out mexican food in the car. I've found it near impossible to eat a taco and drive at the same time. Not good, not good at all. :)

Bill Cobabe said...

I am going to say that I completely agree with you. But if you want bite-sized tacos then eat super nachos... I love me some super nachos...

PS - I once bought these cheese-like substance at the store. It was alread shredded (perfect for my quesadillas) and I was really anxious to try it out. It turns out that it was super cheap because it wasn't cheese at all - it was some kind of yellow starchy substance. I threw it out. Now, this was back in the day when we had regular plastic trash bags for garbage pick up, and here in Texas (unbeknownst to me at the time) critters of various nature have determined that these black plastic trash bags are filled with goodies. So when I went to go to work the next AM - there was the stuff all scattered all over the road. Nice. So I had to pick it up but I noticed that even the critter (of unknown origin) found the cheese-substance colorful, he (I am assuming it was a he) did not eat any more of it than I did (which was about a teaspoon). In disgust, he scattered it all over the road.

When I came home for lunch, however, it was gone. Something ate it. My guess is ants.

The Domestic Flunky said...

mmmm... tacos. i heard once that tacos are the "most dangerous food to eat while driving". I wouldn't know. Mine rarely make it out of the Taco Bell parking lot.