From: clough@texas.net   
      
   Bass Guitar God wrote:   
   > I bet they ate a lot of burritos and tacos and stuff in the old west right?   
   The   
   > reason I say this is the influence of the "south of the boarder" culture on   
   the   
   > west, which permeates to this very day.   
      
   They wouldn't have known a taco by that name. If you showed them one, I   
   suspect they'd shrug, since all you had done was wrap a tortilla around   
   some meat.   
      
   "Mexican food" in the old southwest was pretty much tortillas and beans.   
   Which is to say it was flat bread and beans. Lots of beans. Tortillas   
   keep pretty good for a while, and beans keep a long time dried and are   
   easy, if slow, to cook. The closest thing I know of to a taco was the   
   simple practice of bending a tortilla into a makeshift spoon for the beans.   
      
   Tortillas and beans was the "Mexican food" because it was cheap.   
   Mexicans of means ate a far better and more varied menu. There was a   
   saying among poor but hospitable Mexicans. "Where there's tortillas   
   enough for two, there's enough for three. Where there's enough for   
   three, there's enough for four."   
      
   In Texas, in the old days (mid 19th century), it was rough cornbread and   
   salt pork. No flour. No sugar. Coffee, if you were lucky. Good coffee,   
   if you were phenomenally lucky. And no cream. Maybe some molasses on   
   your cornbread for dessert. It was neither a healthy nor appetizing diet.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
                         clough@texas.net   
   "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)