It’s a bit from The Princess Bride movie. If I find actual mutton I will try it. But it’s been 38 years and I’m starting to lose hope.

I know this sauce. It’s the exception. Add only what is needed. It’s Mexican. Not Italian…

Two ways: 1) A ) when making your own tortillas work in the lard, bacon grease, shortening, oil or whatever with your fingers before adding water. Work it. Work it some more. It should all be a consistent texture. B ) Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes after working the water in. Plastic wrap or lint free towel. Your choice. Refrigerator or counter. Your choice. But it’s got to fully hydrate that flour. C) roll from the center of the ball out when shaping the tortilla. This gets all the gluten going in the same relative direction.

2. just buy really good quality tortillas. I found these in the Walmart clearance bread rake. Half a dozen 12 inch / 30 cm tortillas for $1.66. Ingredients: flour, water, oil, salt yeast. Sure it’s palm oil. Sure it’s yeast instead of baking powder. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that is 5 ingredients. No fillers. No stabilizers. No preservatives. Just a good old fashioned tortilla. These things are stretchy. Probably built up a bit of gluten during the yeast rest phase.

You don’t even have to heat them to bend them. Fur Walmart’s Marketside brand they are very high quality. They remind me of the tortillas you’d find at every Robertos taco shop in San Diego. The perfect stretch and chew. No tortilla with 6 or more ingredients can match them. And on sale at 27¢ each for 12 inch tortillas can’t really compete by making them myself.

See if there is a tortilla shop near you. Even my town got one recently. Spend a few years making them by hand until you get it perfect. Do whatever it takes. But it’s not just about them not breaking. It’s about that perfect texture.

Better than a MLT? Where the mutton is nice and lean?

I am from the internet. I’m here to help.

You need to visit a Robertos taco shop in San Diego.

Just enough to get the chilies wet and soft once the water is boiled. I usually eyeball something like 8 oz per pepper for the first three.

In this case it was two large Guajillo chilies, seeds removed, cut into one inch pieces, brought to a boil, removed from the burner, rested 20 minutes, added to a blender with one clove of garlic and one full slice from a white onion and a pinch of salt. Blend until smooth adding water from the pot as needed.

Run it through a mesh strainer to get the chunks out.

Do not get clever and add more garlic or onion. You will ruin it.

Sausage or bacon would have doubled the cost.

I throw eggs all the time. It’s a hazard of having chickens who have secret nests. But it’s winter time and all our hens are over two years old so I’m getting like one egg a day tops. And the three legged dog found yesterday’s before I did. Which means I actually had to pay for these eggs. So I’m not throwing these eggs. They cost real money.

Guajillo is a dried red pepper. Typically used in enchilada sauce. Remove the seeds, add to boiling water and let sit for 20 minutes. Toss on a blender with a small amount of white onion and a clove of garlic. Awesome sauce from a shelf stable pantry good.

Also, you did a horrible job of covering your jealousy. I see your hunger. We all do. It’s okay. Nothing to be ashamed of. Other than BBQ sauce on a breakfast burrito. But you probably already know that’s a crime.

Depends on your priorities. Restaurants do not even offer the food I get cravings for. So even if I could afford the $15 to $20 per person they would charge I’d be getting not what I want for substantially more money.

Then there is the issue of time. I work for myself in a situation where I can’t work an extra hour or two to buy this over priced food that I don’t want. So it’s not like I can work to buy the crap meal. So I make the food I want with the time I have for the price I can afford. Which is, kinda ideal. Definitely worth it.

I’m not spending two hours making boxed Mac and cheese. I’m spending two hours baking bread, making tortillas, slow cooking venison chilli. And two hours is on the long end. I can food a lot. So sometimes I might spend a few hours canning three gallons of chili but the day I want to eat the chili it’s 50 minutes because I want fresh made cornbread with it. Why do meal prep a week in advance when you can do it a year in advance?

Over in c/cooking I include the price per person for every meal I post along with disclosing any cost cutting variables like using backyard eggs. It is very possible to cook for less than $3 a meal as long as someone in the house has two or more hours a day to do the cooking.

Tijuana street tacos contain no kernels of corn. They’re on corn tortillas, but that’s the extent of it.

Which is why corn is what separates texmex from San Diego style. Literally the only corn in San Diego mex food is the masa flour. So you get it in tortillas and tamales but You never see kernels of corn anywhere. You won’t find it in the salsa or any other form. This may have changed in the 20 years since I left but if you wanted street corn you had to go to Tijuana because you weren’t going to find it in San Diego.

I don’t know how this happened. It’s a culinary oddity. And I don’t know what it looks like between Texas and San Diego. Everyone knows about the green versus red wars of New Mexico, but I don’t know what their corn status is.

I grew up in San Diego. Most definitely not Mexican food that people in Texas would recognize as Texmex but, according to many, would fit your description. The key difference between Texas and San Diego Mexican food is that Texas uses corn and San Diego avoids it except for corn tortillas.

Can Americans even send mail out of the country anymore? I can’t keep track of what still works.

Make reservations and pay in advance and I can have it ready when you get here. How much would it cost you to get to Lesser Carolina?

Branding irons? Applied directly to the forehead?

“turkey tortilla casserole” I browned some ground turkey, homemade taco seasoning, cumin. Added red bell pepper, turkey stock and tomato paste and boiled until the liquid was just a little more than needed to cost the pan and then layered it all in high quality flour tortillas with some pepper jack on the top later fold. Baked until the chess melted.

I think Texmex needs some form of corn. But it’s definitely a lasagna. One of the few acceptable types of casserole.

For me a failed state is when the government doesn’t follow its own laws or there is no penalty for breaking the law. Once rule of law is gone society and the nation have failed. It doesn’t matter if it’s democracy or any other form of government. If it’s not following its own rules the anarchy is in charge, not the nation’s traditions.