The History of Cinco de Mayo
We Americans celebrate the Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo, in a very different way than in Mexico. In Mexico, May 5th is a day set aside to commemorate the Mexican Army’s victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862; and is celebrated in a more formal way with military parades. In the United States, we have put a very different twist on it as a day to celebrate Mexican-American culture.
My First Taco
It’s not surprising that as a kid growing up in Southwestern Virginia in the 70’s I didn’t experience my first taco until I attended a party hosted by my Spanish teacher Mrs. Lawson. Members of our Spanish Club were invited to her house once a year for a night filled with fun playing pool and eating tacos. I was so impressed with my first taco that Mrs. Lawson brought the recipe to school to me the following Monday.
My mom was equally impressed when we tried out the taco recipe at home, but my dad, who was more of a meat and potatoes guy, wasn’t so impressed. I remember the big deal he made about how messy his taco was when the shell broke apart and taco meat fell between his fingers, and how he threatened to use duct tape to hold his second taco together. For me, though, the mess was part of the glamor of eating such an exotic food. 😉
These days when given a choice for Mexican food, I’ll go with chicken fajitas every time. For a girl who thought tacos were exotic, you can only imagine the look on my face the first time a smoking plate of fajitas was carried my way.
How Margaritas Became My Drink of Choice
I vividly remember tasting my first margarita during the bartending class I took in college. Shhh, don’t tell my mom that I took the class or she will disown me. Growing up in a dry county in a rural part of Virginia, I was raised to believe there were only two types of drinkers, teetotalers and alcoholics. It wasn’t until I headed off to college that I realized that there’s also another group of drinkers, social drinkers.
I was intrigued by booze and learning to bartend appealed to me, most likely because the subject was taboo in my family. When I learned that a bar just south of the Virginia Tech campus offered Saturday afternoon bartending classes, I signed up. One of the many drinks we learned to make was a margarita. I still have my notes from the class tucked in a cookbook in my kitchen pantry.
In reality, I wasn’t much of a drinker in college because I didn’t like the taste of beer or wine, both of which were legal since I was eighteen. I turned twenty-one during my senior year which opened up a wider range of possibilities in the form of mixed drinks; however, many bars didn’t serve liquor and if they did, a cocktail wasn’t necessarily in my budget.
Cocktails made a resurgence in the late 90’s and for the first time in about twenty years, a drink caught my interest. It came in the form of slushy citrusy sweetness from a self-serve frozen margarita machine at a friend’s house, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I’d waited so long to have another margarita.
These days I prefer my margaritas on the rocks and without a salted rim. Chances are good that if go out with friends, I’ll order a margarita before dinner. They’ve also become my speciality for Friday happy hours when entertaining at home, but I’ve also got several other cocktails recipes that I rotate.
Celebrating Cinco de Mayo
A celebration where I can enjoy Mexican food and a margarita is a day I don’t want to miss, even during a global pandemic. Normally, I make homemade chicken fajitas and margaritas for Cinco de Mayo; however, last week I wasn’t able to find fresh chicken at the grocery store so our plan is to do carryout from our favorite TexMex restaurant. Our governor is even allowing cocktails to be sold with carryout so we just might order margaritas to go as well. Desperate times call for desperate measures, indeed!
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Questions:
- • Do you have Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo?
- • What’s your favorite Mexican food?
- • Margaritas: frozen or on the rocks? Rim salted or not?
I grew up in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, so Mexican cuisine and culture are part of my upbringing. It’s funny how what Americans see as Mexican is nothing like what I grew up with.
We cook Mexican food frequently at home since I’m fairly good at it (my sister in law is from Mexico and was a cook in El Paso, Texas for years before she met my brother).
I do love margaritas. We use a very simple recipe but do like the salted rims. Enjoy the day however you will be celebrating today!
The Accidental Marathoner recently posted…Recap of the Virtual Cinco de Miler Race Experience
Come cook for me? 😀
Neither my husband nor I have been to Mexico so we haven’t had true Mexican food; however, after traveling to Texas for work and eating TexMex, it’s tough to get my husband to go out for Mexican food here in Virginia because it’s just not the same. He does approve of the TexMex restaurant we’re hoping to do carryout from tonight!
This is a fun trip down memory lane! My first taco? My mom used to buy those kits with the hard shells and the powder seasoning–she’d brown ground beef. My topping was cheese, lol. My first margarita was at ChiChis in Milwaukee when I was in college. Now I’ve really expanded my palate and with all the tacos available, the sky’s the limit!
Similarly, my first pizza came from a box, probably from Chef Boyardee. These days I opt for shrimp tacos when the opportunity arrises.
While I am not a margarita drinker per se, I do like to get into the spirit of cinco de Mayo. Love a good guac and queso. We had a total fail last night as our order was cancelled bc they ran out of food. We are going to try for a do over tonight
Oh no, what a bummer; hope tonight was a success!
We had a total fail as well. After standing in the parking lot in the rain waiting for our order for over an hour after it was promised, the owner of the restaurant came outside and apologized profusely saying they had not run out of food, but they just couldn’t keep up with the number of orders that came in. He was near tears and I couldn’t be mad. We love that restaurant and we’ll go back another night. There’s a reason we always do Cinco de Mayo at home, and for whatever reason, we ignored our gut feeling last night because we wanted to support the restaurant during these tough times for small businesses.
That’s so cool that you still have that recipe! I haven’t had Mexican food in a while but have definitely been craving it lately. I want pollo asada fries! <3
I still have a recipe box and book that I started putting together in high school and that’s where those two recipes have been all these years.
I had to look up pollo asada fries because I’m not familiar with that dish. I think I’d love it!
I can’t find a note I wrote this morning, let alone one from college! Good on you for that, Deb.
This was the first year we had Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo. I’ve avoided Mexican restaurants on that day because they were overrun with gringos chasing dollar Coronas! haha. Getting takeout this year was a different story, and it was delicious (I got carnitas.)
Enchiladas – cheese enchiladas! – are my go-to. I love that depending on where your cook is from (or where their grandmother is from, more accurately), you’ll get a different mole sauce on your enchiladas. There are seven that correspond with seven regions in Mexico.
I’ll take my margarita frozen with salt!
HaHa! If nothing else, I’m organized! I still have my recipe box and recipe book that I started putting together in high school (it’s filled mostly with my grandmother’s and mom’s recipes) that I still use for older recipes. As you can tell from the worn and spotted condition of the taco recipe, I still use it occasionally.
This year was the first year that we decided to go out to pickup carryout from a Mexican restaurant because we wanted to help out one of our favorite local restaurants. We ordered online and selected a 6:45 PM pickup. When we arrived the parking lot was full of people standing around waiting for their orders. A lady walked by who had just gotten her order and said her pickup time was 4:30. Oh boy! We waited until 7:40 when the owner came out near tears and said they had to cancel the remainder of the unfilled orders. He said they hadn’t run out of food, they just didn’t have the manpower to prepare the food for as many orders as came in. I felt so badly for him – they do a great dine-in business and just don’t have experience for that much carryout at once. We’ll give it another try one night next week.
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