We come to my favorite time of year.  Sure, there’s not a pronounced difference in the seasons of Sur de Tejas, but at least the heat doesn’t beat you over the head.  I enjoy the Fall festivals, Halloween, and the general celebration of things harvest-related.  Up north, they’re enjoying the wonderful colors of the changing leaves – from green to shades of yellow, and red, and orange.  We notice a change in the season’s color here too, but our shades of orange and yellow show up in the decorations of the various retail establishments.  Still, we’ll see a welcome drop in the humidity.

I took note of Moon in her fullness this month.  A good time to do it because it was a special moon.   The full moon nearest the equinox, the Harvest Moon, fell on the equinox this year (making it the Harvest-est Moon) – an event that hasn’t happened in twenty-five  years and won’t happen again for a two decades.  That’s about as often as I’ve hit the gym.  Not something to be crowing about.  So with the appearance of the Super Harvest Moon, I went to the gym.  It was sobering. . .I had a fitness assessment so that I could start a wellness plan.  They assessed me, but there was no fitness to be found.  Now don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t all bad.  But there’s certainly ample room for improvement.  I don’t want to compete in the Iron Man, or the Mr. Universe competition, but I would like to have the speed and endurance to go birding all day  and the strength to wrestle a flat tire without busting a gut.  Modest goals…attainable goals.  Already I’ve cut my taco consumption to Breakfast Taco Friday’s, tacos in foreign cities, and the occasional taco for verification or ground-truthing.

And so in celebration of Breakfast Taco Friday, Taco Show Host and I met at Las Milpas on Navigation near the Interstate.  I had a chorizo con papas en maiz, and the daily special:  a breakfast sausage with scrambled eggs on flour.  We had a bit of discussion as to why I’ve been on the chorizo and potatoes kick lately and I think the reason is chorizo.  Usually, and today was no exception, the chorizo is sauteed with already cooked potatoes so it doesn’t permeate the potato, but covers it generously.  I get to taste both separately, and together and this morning it was very good.  The corn tarp was a bit dry and had a not-all-too-unpleasant crunchiness to the edges.  The taco was large and adequately filled with goods.  The special was good.  Nothing special if you know what I mean.  It was a generous portion of sausage and egg scramble in need of salt.  The tortilla was an off-round saddle blanket with quite a bit of hand-made non-uniformity.  A hunger-buster for sure.  The thing I found funny was that there was no salsa.  Our waitress delivered a Ranchero sauce, but nothing more traditional.  Later she asked if we wanted some hot sauce and when she delivered, she mentioned that it was habanero.  And it was.  It came in a squirt bottle as well it should because you’d have to be pretty dedicated to dip a chip in it.  Taco Show Host and I thought that the day’s version might just have been the hottest we’ve seen in a taqueria.  The coffee was good and happily delivered by a doting waitress.  The building was clean on the inside, if a bit run-down out.  Pretty good and worth a try.

Salud

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver is a true talent of our times and her list of acting accomplishments is long.  Born in New York, 1959 she began her career in the mid 70’s.  Exploding onto the scene as the no-bullshit-bad-ass Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s Alien. Ms. Weaver always looks good whether killing an alien (No one makes crawling half-naked into a space suit look as good.) or playing one, a nine-foot tall one  in Avatar.  You can also see her in the movie, You Again with the larger-than-life Jamie Lee Curtis.  How can you go wrong?

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at Whetstone Graphics on a Friday morning of your choice. Offer subject to cancellation by order of the wives of the tacoteurs.  Enter to win by emailing your name and an extra large pair of Galaxy Quest Special Edition DVD sets to tacos@tacotopia.net.

I have been out of sorts lately. The work I’ve been doing is frustrating, and I’ve had many obstacles come up to impede it’s progress. Machines breaking down, employee drama, scheduling problems, and on and on. That’s why it’s called work.  I have moved back and forth between working long hours and taking brief trips into the heaven of my wife’s great cooking, and perhaps a little irish whiskey now and then. I have, in fact, been so busy that I’ve been unable to put together a post for a while. The Hat has been picking up the slack. It’s not for lack of trying, though. I’ve been to one taqueria in particular three times trying to put together a post, but it hasn’t materialized yet.

Lila's Juevos Ahogados

I did, though, have a little time this morning to get my taco on so the Hat, his better half, and myself all converged near the Saxet Hall on Leopard this morning. Saxet is Texas spelled backwards for those who don’t know. It’s a tough little shopping center that has seen better days but is still kicking. The hall bears witness to the Hurricane Alley Roller Derby about every month. It also hosts countless quinceañeras, to which I have dropped off my stepson many times. Some of these quinces have bikers working security so there’s little to worry about in this neighborhood. Not your weekend bikers either, but bikers who couldn’t hide their colors if they wanted to, and they don’t want to.

The first thing we tasted was the coffee – which was a good deal stronger than most. The lady bringing out the coffee was Lila herself, the namesake of the restaurant. She was polite and dignified with perfect english. Hold on – before you get bent about that last bit – let me explain. I don’t assume she speaks Spanish, I know because she was cracking the whips with the other waitress and the kitchen crew in Spanish. I would guess this was her first language, and when people live in a country where they have to speak in a foreign tongue much of the time  they usually end up in one of three groups. The first is people who have a thick accent whose speech never grows closer to that of the host country (think of the governator). The second are people who assimilate perfectly into the host country so that by listening they could only be identified as non-native by a finely tuned ear. The third group are people who are able to speak as well if not better than the locals, but choose to retain a flavor of their first language out of respect for their own culture. Lila falls into the third group.

I ordered a chorizo & egg, and a carne guisada. Lila brought them out and they looked pretty typical of the taquerias in the area. The tortillas were the star of the meal, both flour and corn on a level with the best in town. The salsa, too, was distinctive: very hot, and pretty fresh. The carne guisada was subtle but good. The chorizo & egg was sharp and delicious, bringing me back to the first time I tried C&E as a child. It tastes exactly how it’s supposed to. I’ve had better, but not very often.

I asked Lila how long they’d been there, and she said 12 years – but that’s after 5 years as another location. Cesar, the co-owner was there too, dressed in a uniform shirt for another job. Do yourself a favor, like the numerous police who were eating there this morning, and drop in for a taco. You won’t be sorry. Watch the parking lot though, it’s hungry too, for cars.

Our Taco Award Winner for this week is:

Aria Giovanni

Aria Giovanni is one of the three most beautiful women in the world. Period. The other two are Salma Hayek, and my wife. I’m not going to reveal what order they’re in but you should note they all have black hair and brown skin, and they all have curves. If you look up cleavage in wikipedia, they have a picture of Ms. Giovanni. A compelling argument for blended marriage, she is Italian Yugoslavian French German Irish and Native American. Aria is a model, meaning she’s pretty much hot for a living.  She was briefly married to Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5. This makes him barely the winner of the ‘I divorced the hottest pinup girl in the world’ contest he had with Marilyn Manson himself who divorced Dita von Teese. A frequent guest at comic book conventions, she has served as a surrogate imaginary girlfriend for a generation of nerdcore fanboys. Be careful for the NSFW if you google her.

Offer includes 2 tacos, an audience with the ‘tacoteurs,’ and a free tacotopia t-shirt. Please redeem this offer at Whetstone Graphics on a Friday morning of your choice. Offer subject to cancellation by order of the wives of the tacoteurs.  Enter to win by emailing your name on the back of the September 2000 issue of Penthouse to tacos@tacotopia.net.

You know how when you’re eating something divine – something so good that everyone’s mute, lost in a private world called delicious – that there are really no words to describe the experience.  Sure you can list the ingredients, spices, textures, and colors – but you can’t describe the emotion in it.  At least not without using an emotion to do it:  I love this.  This makes me happy.  But the love and happiness can’t be described.  We know ‘em when we see ‘em.  I guess that’s true for all emotions come to think of it.  So I guess that’s why I’m having a bit of trouble describing my trip.

I recently I mentioned on these very pages that I’d be going up to the World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook Off in Brady, TX.  And I did.  The trip was a success.  I hung out with friends, cruised “The Drag” a couple of times and Razzooed the park where the cook off was held.  (Razzoo, v. to amble the campgrounds of a public event such as a cook off, or camping area with little or no purpose other than to see and to be seen, to visit, and to generally take in the experience.)  It was a light crowd this year, some said ‘cause of the economy.

Now when you’re cooking a goat, you’re included in a cohort of cookers.  There’s some willingness to share recipes, stories and beverages with other cookers so there’s a fairly good chance that you can find a good taste of goat.  I didn’t have that opportunity this year but I was counting on a barbecue goat taco from the contract cooker on site.  In preparation, I stopped at Del Rey’s Restaurant and Bakery Saturday morning and picked up a bag of tacos to take back to the crew at Ricks Home Furnishings. Now the regular readers of Tacotopia will have heard the proclamation that Corpus Christi is the breakfast taco capital of the world and every now and then we get the opportunity to sample the breakfast taco offerings from that world.  It’s not just an opportunity, but it’s an obligation to sample, evaluate, and in some cases pass that experience on to other breakfast taco lovers.  I picked up some bacon and egg tacos, a chicharrone taco, and one filled with something red.  The tacos were big and the flour tortillas were pretty good.  I took a bag of the tarpoleans to go in preparation for the lunch-time cabrito taco I was planning to build.  Maria was very friendly and offered a taste of the chicharrones before I ordered.  They were spicy, and kind of spongy.  The seasoning was good, but the chichas were not prepared my favorite way.  Not enough to scare me away, though – kind of messy to eat, but nothing like the pig taco.  This taco filling was kind of a pork guisada, but bright red.  Fire engine red!  Monkey-butt red!! The meat was tender, but nothing stood out about it. I think I got a hint of garlic, maybe black pepper.  The salsa was lackluster.  But still the trip was worth it just to see a taqueria with a pool table.  Been to many in Tacotopia, but never seen that.  If I had to put a label on the place, I’d give it a C.

My lunchtime goat taco on the other hand I’ll give a hearty D-!  I won’t spend a bunch of time going on about how I know something about barbecuing a goat.  I don’t think you have to know a thing about it.  The outfit out of Sonora that did the job had an adequate set up, but I’d have to say that the pits needed a cleaning.  Goat has a pretty distinguishable taste and this was overpowered by what seemed to be the smoking fumes of several inches of burning brisket fat.  Not even wrapped in a tortilla, with a pretty good pile of fresh onions and a liberal dosing of an excellent XX Red salsa from Corpus Christi’s La Familia Salsa Company could save this taco.  I was disappointed, but maybe I was just hyped up and nothing could have met my expectations – but I don’t think so.  Many years of cabrito cooked by the Brady Chamber of Commerce, and later by Hard Eight BBQ in Brady are enough for me to know that this was not good eats.  In a way I’m glad that words can’t describe my emotions.

But the rest of the event was really good.  There was a broad selection of vendors hawking their stuff, the music and dance opportunities were some of the best I remember, and to see the town and remember younger, simpler times was well worth the trip.

Salud