How about this for a dream… work for the man, maybe in software, and save your rear end off.  No grand vacations until you retire.  Only trips to the river with your Parrothead friends.  Then, after the kids are out of the roost, buy a slightly used Winnebago but then learn that your savings won’t last long.  So you settle in Laughlin, living out of the Winnebago at a KOA ground, and get a part-time job at Lamps Plus.  But then, one day, who comes in?  Jimmy-fucking-Buffet, looking for a neon Margarita light.  He’s been your hero for years but now that you’re down on your luck, all you care about is making commission from the sale.  You make the sale, your idol walks out the door, but you don’t care.  You feel numb on the inside and never listen to a Jimmy Buffet song for the short remainder of rest of your life.  Now that’s what I call a dream!

The Highway Men, Highway Man 

vs.

Tina Turner, What’s Love Got to Do with It

My favorite parts are looking at Tina Turner and Johnny Cash talking about flying in a starship, whatever that is.

As in the days of yore

Hunters and gatherers

Aren’t farmers, no.

They gather the food

That feeds their brood

At the Wall Mart store.

So what am I saying? Well, most of the feedback I get from this site is from a guy hawking something called Tramadol in South Florida. There have been great moments, but overall, I feel like I’ve let you down–which is perplexing because I also feel like “you” often don’t exist (and my google analytics verify that)–which is also my fault. Ahg! So you see my predicament?

I love burritos. I’m still eating a few a week, and I don’t see that changing. I thought through this site I’d make some discoveries, and perhaps I shall. But progress is slow due to my lack of intertia and time and the nature of insights. The insights I have gained have been small. (Did you know that at El Porvenir, the oldest continuously run restaurant in San Diego, they began making salsa out of dried chilis because the proprietor, who confessed this to me, was lazy and didn’t like fresh ingredients that would go bad, so she banished them from the kitchen? That’s amazing, to me.) I thought I’d do a trip to Sonora and discover the origins of the gigantic wheat tortilla. I thought I’d go to TJ and taste around down there. LA too. I thought I’d figure out where this form came from and share that insight. I haven’t really done that, and I’m not convinced that anyone besides me really cares or that I have the time or will to convince anyone why they should care.

(Quickly: you should care beacuse this form of burrito is unique to this region and that alone says something, profound I think. Because our oldest restaurants are Mexican-American, our culture is Mexican-American, and this food product is a way of examining both sides of the border and how they’ve come to be for the average, burrito-eating person–not through the lens of politics or monied interest or any of the other vantages that typically hog our history. This is ultimately about us in San Diego now. And goddamn they taste good.)

So, if you do check in here from time to time, the theme is going to change–if there’s to be a theme at all. I have the site, might as well use it. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to the night. That’s all right. Better than spitting into the wind!

Paz, C

I am reminded again about why I became curious about San Diego burritos: They are different—why?

You can make this statement/question about any two distinct things, I suppose, but burritos are what I grew up eating, San Diego burritos.

In Albuquerque, the tortillas are thicker, almost like pita. The prices are somewhat higher, like closer to $5 for a burrito, and they are considerably smaller than out here.

They aren’t served with hot sauce. Instead, they ask: red or green chile? Ingredients are up to you. You get at least three. I saw potatoes, cheese, beef, beans, chicken, etc. Then they are folded over—with open ends! A mess!

And do you know what?  They’re really, really good. The beans are runny and gooey. The chiles are fresh and spicy. Best of all, the cheese is melted.

Like San Diego, the taquerias serve other food, but burritos are the mainstay, food for busy people.

The other interesting thing to me was learning, as I walked through Bandelier National Monument, that the Pueblo Indians traded with the indigenous people of mainland Mexico. They have parrot remains in the north of New Mexico that are 1,000s of years old. So there was a latitudinal transfer in this land despite the mighty Sonoran desert. They ate corn primarily, like the Mexicans, and rounded it out with beans and squash, the Mesoamerican diet.

This is different from the American Indians around San Diego, which doesn’t have nearly the Indian presence that New Mexico does. How this affects burritos, I’m not sure. But I’m sure that it does.  Everything does.

So I continue to wonder: why this and not another? From where do our traditions arise? Will they be lost some day?

Sang Bob Dylan, “Nothing is better, nothing is best. Take heed of these words and get plenty of rest.”