Mexican Food

Tagged with breakfast, food, mexico, philippines, united states on June 26, 2024

Today, what a lot of people call Mexican food is actually Mexican-American food, invented in the United States. Regardless, no food says Mexico like the taco. Unlike most of my fellow Americans, I’ve actually eaten tacos in Mexico.

I can’t even tell you the names of all the Mexican dishes I’ve had over the years, whether in Mexico or the United States. There are some I’ve eaten less than 10 times in my life, like tamales. There are others, of course, that I’ve eaten so many times I lost count years ago.

Burritos

The names of some Mexican dishes are regional in nature. I doubt you’ll be able to order a burrito in Mexico City. Most Mexicans consider it a taco folded around the ingredients, which are much the same as a taco. The “shell” is usually a flour tortilla, pliable and easy to fold.

A fried burrito is called a chimichanga. If you look for burritos in grocery stores, some of the packages will say “chimichanga” on them. Don’t be fooled, they’re exactly the same as burritos. They haven’t been fried. Some companies will use both terms interchangeably. Do they really think customers are that stupid?

There’s a Mexican-American invention called the breakfast burrito. Some fast food places sell breakfast burritos that are tiny and expensive. Josie, my wife, makes the best breakfast burritos I’ve ever eaten. They’re huge, with ingredients that can consist of scrambled eggs, shredded cheese, potatoes of some kind, and some kind of meat. Sometimes, more than one kind of meat. I like to dip them in salsa as I eat them.

Enchiladas

At Josie’s last place of employment, which lasted 20 years, she had to work with a lot of Mexican-Americans who could barely speak English. In order to converse with them, she had to learn their Spanish dialects. One of the things she learned from them was how to make enchiladas.

Even though she knows how to make enchiladas with beef and other types of the animal meat, she only makes them using chicken. I prefer white meat because it isn’t as greasy as the dark meat. We don’t eat enchiladas in the Philippines very often. In fact, we’ve only had enchiladas twice in the last two years, and it was within the last two months.

Enchiladas don’t taste right without enchilada sauce. The enchilada sauce she used both times came from the United States. It was just one of the many food items we sent ahead of ourselves in one of many balikbayan boxes while we were in the United States. There are a lot of food items we haven’t been able to find in the Philippines, and this just happens to be one of them.

Tacos

Some people think the tacos sold by various fast food franchises are authentically Mexican. I’m talking about places like Taco Bell and Del Taco. They are far from authentic, unless you call them authentically American.

A taco is simply a tortilla folded over, with assorted ingredients. Usually, some form of animal meat is involved, but not always. Like plain bean burritos, I’ve seen plain bean tacos. A flat, stiff taco is called a tostada, which is an American invention.

Tortillas can be made of either corn or flour. Corn tortillas shaped like tacos and flour tortillas shaped like bowls are more American inventions. A taco salad, yet another American invention, comes with a tortilla shape that’s supposed to represent a large bowl, yet fails miserably to do so.

Josie and I have tacos at home frequently, whether we’re in the Philippines or the United States. We tend to use flour tortillas, refried beans, ground beef, iceberg lettuce, shredded cheese, and salsa. We’ve used flat, stiff corn tortillas at times, but we can rarely find the kind that aren’t broken in the packages while still in the store.

Finding Products and Ingredients in the Philippines

We can find most of the food items we’re looking for, even if we have to travel more than an hour to the S&R warehouse store in the province of Pampanga. Even then, we can’t find the best examples of the kinds of products we’re looking for.

Frozen burritos, for example. When I buy them, they’ll last for more than a month in my freezer. I dislike eating burritos that include beans, and I can’t seem to find any other kind. As I already mentioned, we can’t find enchilada sauce. It’s supposed to be carried at the Puregold warehouse stores and at the SM supermarkets, but I haven’t seen any yet.

I have to make it a point to look for specific things in every type of store that carries groceries, or I’ll simply forget the next time I’m in one of those places. I now have an application on my phone that I use primarily for shopping lists.

There are no Mexican-style restaurants nearby. Perhaps in Manila, but there’s no way I’ll go to Manila just to eat at a restaurant. I avoid Manila, except for when I need to go to the Bureau of Immigration, the airport, or the embassy.

Before I forget, nachos aren’t Mexican either. They’re Tex-Mex, like many other Mexican-American dishes. Now, I’ve only mentioned the dishes I’m familiar with. There are more dishes I can’t even remember the names of available in Mexico and the Southwestern United States.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay