Comments on: America is part Mexican

By: Bert Chadick

Bert Chadick — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 18:18:20 +0000

I like to think I an tolerant of all the versions of “Mexican” food, and they all have their charms. Unlike my favorite aunt, who opined that flour tortillas were an abomination, I have learned that fajitas just aren’t the same when made with corn (traditional) tortillas. Believe me I’ve tried. I was raised on TexMex and it tends to go down the spicy road but not as spicy as New Mexico & Colorado Mexican dishes can be. Tamales are actually pre-Colombian (pre Mexican) native foods. Anywhere corn was grown the tamale was the preferred dish. Burritos, fajitas and churros are relatively recent addition to the cuisine.
Traditional European foods wouldn’t exist without the new world foods. No tomato, no spaghetti sauce. No chili pepper, no Northern Chinese & Thai dishes. No potato, no…. pretty much everything. Coming back across the Atlantic, cheese, onions, wheat, olives, pork, beef and sour cream. I will give California a pardon for the repulsive habit of putting black olives on everything because they added sour cream to our dishes.

My point agrees with Greg’s theme; we would all be worse off without cross cultural pollination. The truth of this can be seen in South Texas where many families before The Great Deprression didn’t really know which country was their home. I’m as Anglo as they get but because my ancestors were colonists in Texas before the revolution they were Mexican citizens (a requirement for all the settlers before 1836). Just for fun I do list my heritage as Mexican on a a lot of surveys and forms to be filled out.

In post Trump America folks need to become used to fabulously expensive fruit and vegetables. Only the rich will eat apples. Give peas a chance.

By: Pierce R. Butler

Pierce R. Butler — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 00:54:46 +0000

So what do Minnesotans say when they want to order a taco-taco?

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 20:18:00 +0000

Lots of aItalian and modern fusion bistro style, and fast food.

Well of course the areas with high gringo tourist traffic are going to cater to the gringo tourists. So it will be harder to get authentic local cuisine in Cancun or Cabo San Lucas than in places with less tourist traffic. I saw the same thing when I toured the Great Wall in China: the restaurant where all of the tour buses stop serves Americanized Chinese food, not the real stuff.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 15:43:41 +0000

Eric and Lyle, all good points about on the ground diversity.

Go to the Maya Riviera and eat. If you look really hard you can find a Mayan restaurant. The next hardest restaurant to find is a “Mexican” restaurant. Lots of aItalian and modern fusion bistro style, and fast food.

OK, so I’ll mention Chimichangas. I learned to cook them in Phoenix, from an anglo dude I knew in Albany but who went there about a year earlier and got a job as a Chimichanga chef in a very popular restaurant in the middle of the city.

When I returned from Phoenix I introduced chimichangas to the Northeast, and eventually restaurants opened to serve them. You are welcome.

I used to judge a Mexican restaurant by its chimichangas. But I think the Chimi has evolved into something different than the original and traditional style, possibly because someone figured out you could make them in advance and them microwave them.

Which you can’t, really.

By: lyle

lyle — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 15:32:20 +0000

Compare the “mexican” food found in California to that in Texas and there is a big difference. Partly this may be because the source region in Mexico is different. California mexican tends to be less spicy than what is found in Texas. Texas really had a significantly larger Spanish/Mexican presence than California before the revolution/ mexican war.

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 03:45:17 +0000

Mexico is of course large enough to have regional variations in its cuisine. Don’t expect a local place in Ensenada to serve the same things as a local place in Merida, and what you get in Oaxaca will differ from both. (Of course you’ll be able to find your favorite regional cuisine in Mexico City, and probably in Guadalajara as well.) We used to have an Oaxaca style restaurant in my town (it didn’t make it), and I think I have had both Veracruz style and norteño (from one of the inland states bordering the US) style in the town where my mother lives.

Chinese food is a more extreme example. There isn’t really a single Chinese cuisine, but something like 8-10 different regional cuisines, none of which is the Americanized stuff you see in most Chinese restaurants in the US. (If you can still find a Chinese restaurant–at least in my part of the country, the trend is for restaurants to attempt both Chinese and Japanese cuisine, with the usual result that they do neither one well.) You can find any regional Chinese cuisine in the big cities (Beijing and Shanghai definitely, probably Guangzhou as well), but out in the provinces expect the local cuisine, and any resemblance between what you get in Yunnan and what you get in Heilongjiang will likely be coincidental.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 22:41:10 +0000

Dr. Bribiescas, as you may have guessed, you and yours were very much on my mind as I wrote this piece. And not just about the abuse of the concept of the burrito, but all the anthropology.

And, for those who have not seen it yet, check this out: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2016/10/24/aging-in-men-an-evolutionary-perspective/

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 22:38:15 +0000

But, I quickly add: The Hispanic/Mexican zone of culture and influence, as noted in the post, is not just those ceded lands, but a much larger area.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 22:37:39 +0000

Yeah, I should have used that … damn.

By: Richard Bribiescas

Richard Bribiescas — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 22:23:46 +0000

“Don’t get me started about chimichangas.” Love it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.. Well said Dr. Laden.