Eating in Texas

November 20, 2007, 1:30 a.m.

On chilies and Bubu Lubus

The Devil's Clack Dish:
A Column

I’ve had plenty of tacos in my day. I spent my quondam youth snarfing down dozens of them at Adolph’s in East Moline, IL, where it was not unusual to see a gang of college kids having hot sauce drinking contests at three in the morning.

Adolph’s may have offered more Mexican fare than just tacos. I vaguely recall getting a drunken breakfast of huevos rancheros there. But like most Midwesterners of the time, I did not understand or truly appreciate the cuisine of other countries. I just ate a bunch of cheap tacos. They were good, by the way.

I come from the land of beef, broth and potatoes; spaghetti always had the sauce mixed into it, macaroni and cheese came from a blue box and cream-soup-based casseroles were plentiful and smothered with tater tots. Pizza was a late night snack that was made from a box of Chef Boyardee cheese pizza mix (it’s an abomination. And I think they still make them. The horror, the horror.) There was no meal without meat.

Gravy and bread and butter were offered at every meal and salad consisted of a wedge of iceberg lettuce and a glob of Thousand Island dressing. Perhaps a daring wedge of tomato would be thrown into the salad for a thrill. Sometimes “salad” would be considered a mix of fruit cocktail and Cool Whip.

Desserts were cakes and pies, also offered at every meal (well, not breakfast, but one hoped) and more than likely adorned with ice cream. Much fun has been made at the expense of this white middle class fare and, while I agree with the pundits, I’ll also point out that we found it mighty tasty and often still do. This diet was based more on the fears of our depression era moms than anything else.

This monoculture of food has somewhat disintegrated and this is a testament to the multi-cultural beauty of America. If other cultures contributed nothing other than their food (which, of course, is not the case) our country has been made a vastly richer place. (A point which is made far better by Nelson Algren in America Eats.) Over the course of the last thirty years, my palate has gratefully expanded to include many cuisines, most especially Indian (I could eat mattar paneer, jasmine rice and gulab jamun every day of my life) and Thai (ditto for the green curry).

I could also eat a hamburger (home-made, of course) for every meal and feel perfectly happy (I once interviewed Julian Lennon and we discovered we both had eaten hamburgers for breakfast that day. In spite of his legendary cooking skills, he still likes a good sherbet fountain once in a while, I’ll wager.) My happy forays into foreign cuisine have little changed my cooking style outside of a jar or two of fennel seed and a good dash of garam masala.

I’m not a Taco Belle fan and my hatred of pizza is notorious. My tongue still nurtures a small town white girl.

A couple of years ago I moved in with my mom to care for her when she was dying from cancer. After she passed away, I sat in that house, almost afraid to leave, for a full year. I was like one of those faithful dogs waiting for the never-to-return dead master. My brother said, get out of there and come to where the sun shines and the food is good; come be my roomie in Texas.

So, last year I moved to Texas. Remember how your parents told you that as you got older your tastes in food would change and then you’d really love beets or asparagus or fried beef liver or Brussels sprouts or beef tongue sandwiches? Well, I already liked all that stuff. My taste buds came fully loaded with my sticker price. I’ve never eaten anything that radically changed my tastes. So, Texas means barbecue, Mexican food – fine. I’ll like it. I’m an omnivore, but my tastes for good or bad, are pretty well set in middle America.

Or so I thought. But what happened is that my diet has been upended completely. I blame the Bimbo/Marinela baking company. That’s how it started. I was charmed by the tasty Mexican snack cakes. Napolitanos – orange raisin cakes with chocolate frosting, blew me away. Gansitos – the chocolate covered yellow cakes with jelly and cream filling, amazed me. Bubu Lubus, a sort of Mexican take on Goya gel bars but with marshmallow (alleluia!), cannot be over-rated. Even those Submarinos – a twinkie-like thing filled with strawberry cream, are pretty good. So, first it was the various snack cakes with their pineapple and coconut fillings that got me. Oh, almost forgot my favorite; frosted toast; frosting on a slice of thick dry crispety toast.

Then, my brother says, if you like this stuff, you ought to go to a real Mexican bakery. These places are fiendishly designed to destroy your arteries. There’s just nothing like walking into a 24 hour Mexican bakery and buying fresh-from-the-oven pink- sugared conches at two in the morning.

But this is all baked goods and cake is cake, right? Well yeah, pretty much, except the Mexican flavors are more imaginative and colorful. There weren’t any tamarind cookies at my house when I was a kid. But this baked-good orgy is hardly how my diet changed. Everybody knows I’ll eat any flavor of marshmallow anything. No, it’s not about the sweets, as good as they are. The sweets just broke me in.

The next step is the tortillas. What’s not to like about tortillas, right? Every grocery store here has handmade tortillas that rock. But, again, that's not what changed my diet, although I now buy them every week.

It’s my current love affair with chilies that has changed me. I have never been able to smell a hot pepper, let alone eat one, and now I am now downing a full can of pickled jalapenos every week. Those fat juicy ones in the vinegar are so fantastic. So are the hot and spicy carrots in peppery brine. Nacho slices are now a regular addition to everything I cook. I have become a hot pepper freak since I’ve moved here, where fresh pepper varieties are as common as brown gravy mixes in the Midwest.

Here’s the kicker: I’ve actually eaten a few cheese pizzas since I can load the slice with lots of pickled jalapenos. I daresay I’ve eaten more pizzas (maybe a dozen) in the last year than I had previously eaten in my entire lifetime. No kidding,

So here I am, the viejo pajaro singing a new song. All my standard recipes have undergone radical changes and I cannot imagine eating a meal without chilies. What is the explanation? Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s the beer. And just maybe there are mind altering drugs in those Gansitos.

	Web www.hayshighway.com

The Hays Highway privacy policy

The Hays Highway disclaimer and terms of use] .