That perfect combination

My uncle recently emailed an article to me from the Austin American-Statesman’s website with the message, “This sounds like you!!” The headline read, “Displaced Texan gets food fix on Tex-Mex benders.” My first, and ever so mildly self-centered, thought -- before I even opened the email to link to the article -- was:

Aw man, the Austin paper already has a “Displaced

Texan” column? But my brother suggested that

title to me… It’s special! It’s me! It’s mine! Ooh,

wonder if they’ve copyrighted it.

Then I took a moment to read the piece and learned that there was nothing to worry about.

∞

The article’s displaced Texan is a man who relocated to Florida five years ago and, in that time, has found no decent Tex-Mex food there. So a couple of times a year he and his wife fly to Texas, drive a rental car around the Hill Country, and spend two days eating nothing but Mexican food morning, noon, and night. Then they stock up on Tex-Mex staples which they cannot find in Naples, Fla., like Rotel and marinated fajita meat, and they head back home. The price tag? About $800 per trip.

∞

I can totally relate to his love of Mexican food, though his plight is not mine, since I am fortunate to have moved to someplace where the Mexican food is good. (Well, a lot of it is good. There is this strange phenomenon of Oklahoma restaurants serving this yellow ick referred to as “cheese sauce” that’s not nearly as good -- and I use that term loosely! -- as the canned nacho cheese that you get on concession stand nachos. This yellow ick is not queso. As far as I can tell, it’s not Mexican. And it sure isn’t cheese! It’s this slick, slimy gunk that ought to be outlawed. But it comes with the chips and salsa here, and so is accepted by the natives. Go figure.) So the displaced Texan and his wife are perfectly happy to prepare their own Tex-Mex, and they equip themselves with the cuisine’s basics while in Texas. But my unfortunate Florida counterpart can’t even find a can of Rotel tomatoes in the grocery store?!?!?!!! That, friends, is a travesty. I mean, what do they put in the Velveeta?

∞

And no, I do not believe that all Mexican food in Texas, or anywhere, is good. Some of it is great. Some of it is craptastic. And some of it is just bad.

Of course, good Mexican food, like a lot of things, is subjective. But when you find that perfect combination of peppers and other ingredients… oh yeah.

After all, there’s not much worse than a Tex-Mex restaurant that can’t make a decent enchilada or that uses ketchup as its salsa’s primary ingredient. Unless you count the yellow ick.

∞∞∞

So how many of you who don’t know me, think, because my name is Shawn, that I’m a guy? Nope. It’s something my family has done for a while: give typically boy names to their daughters. I’m Shawn; my mother was Carol Clem; and my great-grandmother was William. I liked the tradition and tried like crazy to convince my husband to agree to name our daughter after my brother. He finally agreed, but only if the boy name came last. So, Samantha Grace Christopher is the continuation of the tradition.

I’ll tell you about her sometime.