Tortilla Nation

I feel the need to educate people on a recent trend that has me very worried. I just saw a commercial yesterday for the new McDonalds $1 Chicken Snack Wrap. People eat in on the street, they eat it on the go, they eat it in the office, they eat it at home. It’s so convenient, that you can take it on the go and hold it in one hand because it’s neatly rapped in America’s new boyfriend – The Tortilla.

In this world of healthy wraps, nouveau fusion Mexican cuisine, late night drive ups and fast casual dining….it seems that tortillas are making a leap to the A-list. I’m proud of the tortilla. It’s getting its much needed moment in the spotlight. But like most things that hit the mainstream, America has begun to pimp out the tortilla so that it has begun to look like a shadow of its former self. It's being handled by mere mortals and it may be a danger to us all. Let me explain…..

When I was a little girl, every morning, Hermelinda, the lady who took care of my grandpa would make homemade tortillas and pan. She would put some scrumptious butter on my tortilla and roll it up for me to have with my café con leche. It was a delicious treat that was stunting my growth and packing on the early pounds, but I was four years old, what did I care? My torrid love affair with the tortilla had begun.

My grammy would often make me tortillas with peanut butter and jelly for an afternoon snack. She would grill the tort to an inch of its life so that it was nice and crispy and smear on the PB&J and I would have it with a bottle of Pepsi (because Mexican’s believe firmly in that Pepsi won the challenge and we also love to recycle glass). The most important part of this equation was the fact that the tortilla had to be very, very toasty.

In my early years, whenever I would try to take her to Taco Bell she would scoff. No way was she going to eat there. Their tortillas were RAW. When we would have brunch at Mexican restaurants, my grammy would send back many a tortilla at a restaurant because it wasn’t toasty enough. “Like a cracker!” she would say when she sent it back. I think her record for sending back the same set of tortillas was five times.

I finally asked my grandma one day why she was so insistent that the tortilla had to be so crispy. “It’s better that way, and besides, if it’s raw, you’ll get worms!” Whaaaaaa-waaa-waaaa-WORMS? I was gonna get worms? Like my dog? Like they were gonna eat me from the inside out and squirm in my body? Oh my God, how many soft tacos had I eaten in my lifetime? How many Big Beef Burritos would it take for a colony of worms to grow in my belly? I was going to die. At the tender age of eight, I knew that it was all over. I was a mere vessel for parasitic colonization.

I ran home and told my mom that I was gonna die. She said that it probably hadn’t done that much damage. “So it’s true?” I asked. “Better to err on the side of caution,” she replied cryptically. From that day on, I never, ever, ever ate a raw tortilla again. Not steamed, not warmed. I needed those bitches grilled to an inch of their life. I even sent them back a few times.

Now in my lifetime, my grammy also told me that if I ate chile seeds that the seed would go in my appendix and I would die. She also told me that eating Vicks was good for me. My grammy knew lots of stuff, so I ain’t trying to question her wisdom.

Today, I would like you to ask yourself the following questions. Does it really seem like a good idea to eat raw dough? Do issues of salmonella and yeast raise a caution flag for you? Do raw eggs scare you? Then I would think that eating a tempe wrap in a raw tortilla (no matter how sun-dried tomatoed that shit is), a steamed burrito, or a microwaved quesadilla might be a little suspect.

Let this be a cautionary lesson for you all. Don’t be fooled by whitey’s attempt to appropriate our foods. They don’t know what they are getting themselves into and I strongly question their ability to handle such things. Tortillas are to be handled with care, cooked on a comal, sarten or directly on your gas stove. There is no other alternative. If a live flame has not touched your tortilla, you may be in grave danger. Assure yourself good health and a long life. Cook your tortillas. You might have to send that shit back five times, but at least you won’t have to have your appendix taken out because of a damn chile seed or have worms eat your insides out.