One of the fun things about the last couple of weeks is the absolute inability of the biggest shit talking mudslingers in politics to lay a hand on either Harris or Walz. Let’s start with Harris — do they have anything but the “is she really black?” racist nonsense? If they do, I haven’t seen it.
Also, she’s authentically middle class, and we know that because she worked at McDonald’s when she was young. Every middle-class kid of her generation can relate to a shitty high school fast food job (I certainly can). If you want to be humbled, do that job for a few days. (It’s also a good way to keep yourself from uttering the stupidest sentence that people who haven’t done a restaurant job will speak: “Wouldn’t it be great to open a restaurant?” No, it really wouldn’t. It’s hard, demanding work, and most restaurants fail in the first year.)
As for Walz, again, nonsense on stilts is all that we’ve heard. Let’s take this taco crisis. Here’s their massive gotcha: even though Walz said that black pepper is about as spicy as it gets for Minnesotans, and he mentioned making “white guy tacos,” Walz posted a taco recipe that actually had some spice.
First, tell me you’ve never been to rural Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota or Nebraska, without saying it. The native cuisine there is absolutely bland. Cream of mushroom features prominently in every hot dish. You’ll never walk into a regular restaurant and get anything that’s the least bit spicy. (Of course, nowadays there are Mexican restaurants everywhere, since Mexican laborers are indispensable to the ag economy, even though the Trump-voting rural folks are living in denial about that.)
Second, Here’s the recipe. It features ground turkey because Minnesota is the #1 turkey producer in the nation, and Walz is pushing that. And, yes, it calls for a jar of medium taco sauce, a can of diced chiles (mild) and an unspecified amount of chili powder. But it also calls for a pound of turkey, 16 oz of sour cream and a bag of tater tots. You could dump a quarter cup of chili powder into that mess and barely taste it. This is the epitome of a dish that a rural Minnesotan would say “has a little kick” and everyone else would say is quite bland. And, trust me, they’d put an infinitesimal amount of chili powder in it.
In closing, watching these Trumpist fuckers sputter has been just 100% entertainment, no notes. They’re careening between “let’s talk about the issues” whenever they’re called weird, and “you’re the real weirdos” whenever Project 2025 is mentioned. It’s been a great ride and I don’t see an end to it anytime soon.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
We’ll sleep when we’re dead!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
LFG!
“When we fight, WE WIN!”
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
First, second, THIRD!
KatKapCC
I never worked fast food, but I did work at a Baskin Robbins, which gave me the odd side effect of my right arm being visibly buffer than my left for a while. I tried scooping with my left but I am the most right-handed of right-handers. I can’t do a dang thing with my left hand/arm. It might as well be a flipper.
Maxim
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Quit hogging the comment thread!
zhena gogolia
When did the concept of metaphorical language, rhetorical language, joking language, humorous hyperbole, etc. die???
(Of course it’s still in force as long as you’re a Republican.)
Ryan
Hey, let’s leave Nebraska out of it, we have plenty of spicy
Baud
We deserve some good times.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I got my Harris-Walz car magnet today!
My husband saw my 25-year-old Honda being sold on the lot today. They had stripped all my bumper stickers going back to Kerry-Edwards, including the 2020 “Joyful Warrior” Kamala sticker that I wish I still had.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Ryan: Yeah, I almost burned my tongue off eating at Runza, LOL. Bland, bland, bland.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
You are pimping your ride.
RepubAnon
I recall eating at a Taco Bell in Wisconsin back in the 1970s. I asked for some of the hot sauce, and the woman at the counter said “watch out, the sauce is really hot!” I opened one, drank it, and said – “well, no.”
NotMax
Obligatory?
;)
Sister Golden Bear
Supreme Court reactionaries to trans and queer kids: Drop dead.
Suzanne
So! My first job was at McDonald’s! It was a shitshow. LOL.
So there is new designer Kamala merch, from the “Designers for Democracy” collection. Another tip of the hat to her team, who absolutely understand the assignment.
karen marie
@zhena gogolia: Did you get a magnetic bumper sticker from the Harris-Walz campaign?
zhena gogolia
@Baud: It’s a pristine white car, and I’m reluctant to pimp it too much. 😂
BR
I’m going to sound like a snob but when I moved from San Diego to Massachusetts for a few years I was missing Mexican food so much and gave in and tried a local spot in town. It was like a local Chevy’s style restaurant (that was the best there was in central Mass). They had a weird menu. The Chile relleno was literally Costco jalapeno poppers with no flavor at all. The “tacos” were hard shell with broccoli and corn and no flavor. Their salsa had no flavor. We left all the food on the plate. We struggled for those few years to get any spicy food in any restaurant and just gave in and stopped hoping for it.
zhena gogolia
@karen marie: No, unfortunately, they only have stickers. I bought a yard sign and baseball cap from them (I still use my Dark Brandon and Aviators tote bags, really high quality). I got the magnet on Amazon from someone who I’m sure does not share a penny with the campaign. But I’m not putting stickers on this car! All I have left from my old car is the Obama-Biden sunrise magnet, and I appreciate being able to salvage it.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear: WE HAVE TO WIN
$8 blue check mistermix
@BR: No lies told – when I moved to Rochester in the mid-90s, the Mexican food scene was a total bust. Only in the last 10 years or so has it gotten decent, with a few taco restaurants opening.
zhena gogolia
@BR: The Northeast is a Mexican food desert.
Suzanne
Also…… bring on the spicy food.
Reminds me of this Thai restaurant I used to go to with my colleagues by my former office. You could select your spice level from 1 to 10. I could top out at about a 6, most of my colleagues were sweating at a 4. We got an intern from Nigeria, and she always ordered her food at a 10. She said she would have ordered it hotter if she could. Respect.
Luther Siler
@BR: BROCCOLI????
thruppence
@Suzanne: Great! The first tranche of Harris/Walz merch seemed unconscionably dull. Let a thousand creative flowers bloom!
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: That is 100% true. The Mexican food here in PGH is mediocre at best. Cole commented once in a post that he took Joelle to a taco place in Washington, PA, that he described as legit, and all us PGH commenters knew the place he was talking about. It’s a local chain and one of them in a block down the road from my house. It’s the best I’ve found here — actually has Mexican people working at it— and yet it would be 5/10 in AZ. Sigh.
Tony Jay
It is great to see. Enthusiasm, fun, wicked digs, and all the MAGATs have is basically running to teacher and whining that Harris and Walz are being mean to them and someone needs to tell them off.
What was it the other day? Tim (Tom?) Cotton publishing a whine in one of the corporate broadsheets along the lines of
“Martian homosexuals wearing the skins of kidnapped blonde women are burning down every church between Vermont and South Carolina, and the Biden-Harris Administration refuses to even admit it is happening!!!”
No shit, Sherlock. And for some reason you can’t make them talk about it by prodding your Villager pals to bombard them with phony questions in pointless press conferences, because they’re campaigning directly to the electorate, not via corporate media and its GOP talking points only membrane.
Again, it’s great to see it.
Steve Holmes
I’m pretty sure that the first time any of my wife’s Indiana relatives had tried Indian food was when they’ve visited our home. Also there is a difference between heat spice, and just flavor. I order Indian for them with lower heat spice when they visit, but just the aromatic spices are more than they’ve ever had.
When my oldest son was a toddler he would call food with a lot of flavor “Too Tasty”, as in too much taste.
Phein64
My wife is from northern Minnesota, and her family live all over the state. Her parents moved to Mankato in 1990, the year I first went to visit (as the boyfriend). During the week I was there, I volunteered to make dinner one evening: Pasta in a lemon cream sauce, something I thought safe enough. But then I put some cracked black pepper on the pasta while it was heating through in the sauce.
This moved my wife’s 80-year old grandmother to inform me, “Well, that spicy stuff might be OK for you, but we like to stick to normal food.”
Then she badgered me into eating some lutefisk in revenge.
TBone
@Suzanne: 😍 oh dear LORT how can I choose just a few? I want ALL of it!
BR
@Luther Siler:
Yeah.
I could also tell you about the Asian fusion restaurant in the area that literally mixed every Asian cuisine together and somehow their soups tasted like chicken noodle.
eemom
“ordered spaghetti with marinara sauce and got egg noodles and ketchup”
Gretchen
I’m loving the taco thing. I’m an old white lady from Michigan, and my husband says, “you won’t like this, Peg, It has flavor”.
Rightwingers are losing their minds and saying there is spicy food in Minnesota. Yeah. There are lots of people in Minnesota, and Michigan, who aren’t old white people. But the old white people I know aren’t carrying bottles of hot sauce around. Except for Hillary Clinton, and the rightwingers accused her of inauthenticity because nobody like her would really carry hot sauce in her purse.
dr. luba
The “hot” in “hot dish” does no mean spicy; it refers to a bed casserole.
The UP of Michigan is much the same spice wise. I was buying pasties at the Mohawk Superette in May, and they had breakfast pasties that day. I asked for one, and was told they only had the spicy ones with jalapeños. I hesitated for a moment, and then thought to myself “this is the UP–how spicy can it be?”
I was right. There was a very slight taste of green chilis……..
dr. luba
@Gretchen: Where in Michigan?
BR
@Steve Holmes:
A family friend of ours who grew up in the Shenandoah Valley among very conservative folks told us one time when she was visiting family for a week that they said that garlic was foreign to them and they couldn’t accept her putting it anything she made for them. So each day she secretly put a little bit of garlic in the food, increasing it each day. And then after a week, she made a meal that had no garlic in it — and they all complained that the food tasted bland.
VeniceRiley
@BR: The day the Tito’s taco family rolled up in Middletown, RI was the day my taste buds were saved. Strangely, I recognised one of them from when we both worked in the Manhattan Beach Buffum’s department store back in the day.
I bought salsa there by the boatload.
Baud
So we’ve come full circle on the tacos.
Falling Diphthong
Not predicting anything. But: Back in the spring when they put the RNC under Trump that seemed a really bad idea. Given that he has incentive to flee the country, and doesn’t care about downballot races. And we know he isn’t paying his bills for the rallies, nor spending much on any races.
I just think that exit path for him is looking quite inviting.
MattF
Kevin Drum has done the service of summarizing the ‘questions’ that were asked at that Bedminster ‘press conference’. Mostly on the order of ‘Sir, do you think God worked hard enough when He saved you from that bullet?’ I can imagine the questions that would be asked of Harris— e.g., ‘Are you really really Black?’
Mousebumples
My mom likes her food bland. My dad pre salts and peppers everything she cooks.
When they come over for dinner, I need to remind my dad that we use spice and seasoning.
My local Indian and Thai places have a 0 to 4 scale. I usually go with a 2. My husband does 3. If I have a nasty cold, I’ll sometimes bump up the spiciness to help clean out my sinuses!
I love that Walz can poke fun at himself and his palate.
I’d also love to see them on Hot Ones, like in October.
Tony Jay
@Suzanne:
While we were living in France we had dinner at the home of an Ethiopian friend who casually ate raw chillis from a jar while cooking. I got away with not even touching one by pointing to my face and squealing “Tres blanc!!!”, but she dared one of our other friends, a Senegalese guy called Bye, to show how African he was by eating one with her.
Swear to god, never seen a man sweat so much. His eyeballs were steaming.
BR
@VeniceRiley:
I almost considered starting a Mexican restaurant in Mass and importing all the stuff from one of the ‘bertos taquerias from San Diego. But then my friends convinced me that nobody would eat it because the flavors would be too wild for them.
Suzanne
Mr. Suzanne’s granddad used to complain about food having “too much flavor” if it has spice in it. He liked to eat at Golden Corral and the A.Q. Chicken House.
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
It pretty much is, but we have a Mexican place a couple miles down the road owned by an immigrant family and it’s pretty good. Authentic salsa that’s made on site is killer and you can get as hot as you like. I like spicy, so I get extra hot. There are two more levels above that. We started going there because we saw all the immigrant construction workers going there and we figured that if our burgeoning Mexican immigrant population likes the place, that’s the place to go.
Suzanne
@BR: -BERTO’S RESTAURANTS!!! I miss them every day.
And breakfast burritos from Los Favoritos. Fuck.
TBone
@zhena gogolia: my tiny rural college town had a taco truck (El Sabor) on Tuesdays that was run by Central Americans serving authentic foods. It was grande! Sadly, they decided to branch out into some other business 😞 and closed this year.
02/01/2024
📢We are saddened to announce that we will not be opening for the 2024 season. We are so incredibly thankful for all of the wonderful customers we have gotten to know over the past 3 years and all the support you have given us!
Please know it has nothing to do with lack of support! The support we recieved from the local communty was more than we ever imagined and we had planned on opening a local restaurant. Our family is feeling led in another direction and following other opportunities God has blessed us with.
We LOVE the customers we met and hope to possibly start a food business again in the future. Thank you again for all the support and love you have shown us! And we will miss tacos as much as you! 😉🌮
Leto
Bojangles, here. 2 1/2 years there. I couldn’t eat fried chicken for almost a decade afterwards. I can eat there now, but I typically stick with the breakfast menu because it’s really good.
TheOtherHank
Native-born Minnesotan here (My parents moved us away when I was 4, but we went back to visit the farm my mom grew up on a lot and I went back to the U of MN for grad school). When I was in grad school an Indian restaurant opened up near to where we lived. During our first outing there I was interested in a dish that had user-selectable spiciness levels. I asked the server (they were all Indian; a family business, I assume) if the spiciest level was Minnesota spicy or Kill-A-White-Person spicy. She looked at my overwhelming whiteboy-ness and said, “You should get medium.” She was correct.
Geminid
@Baud: The question no longer whether there will be a Taco truck on every corner, it’s whether it will it be a good taco truck.
Mousebumples
pacem appellant
Call me old fashioned, but one of my favorite parts is how the Legacy Media is trying to make the Harris-Walz ignoring them “a thing”, but even with the full might of the editorial board, they’re getting steamrolled by the campaign and there is nothing they can do about it.
When they complain about lack of access, they expose themselves as the whinny-ass titty-babies that they are. When they give Harris bad press, her numbers go up anyway, making them even madder that they aren’t the arbiters of good taste they they believe in their little tiny hearts that they are.
BR
@Tony Jay:
The thing I find most amusing about the global tropical chili pepper culture is that it’s actually a product of European colonization — chili peppers are native to central America and were only grown and eaten there until Columbus. In Asia and Africa they used black pepper, ginger, turmeric, Sichuan peppers, etc. and other things to create spice. And in the span of a couple of hundred years chili peppers (and corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, and more) took over the world.
TBone
Just south of DelCo, PA, the Kennett Square/Oxford area is blessed with an abundance of truly authentic Mexican restaurants. I was so spoiled.
Steve Holmes
@BR: my mother in law says garlic gives her indigestion, but no matter how much I cook with she doesn’t seem to notice, and I get all the compliments.
realbtl
Any ethnic food here in Montana has to be followed by “for Montana.” As in it’s good Mexican food *” for Montana.”
*substitute ethnic food of choice.
BR
@Suzanne:
San Diego breakfast burritos are of infinite variety and yet somehow all amazing.
TheOtherHank
With respect to Mexican food in Minnesota, our favorite place way back in the 90s was La Cucaracha (yes, most Minnesotans of that era didn’t know Spanish) in Saint Paul. So yummy.
Leto
@Suzanne: I think I found your Nigerian intern’s receipt.
TBone
I miss the kolaches from Galveston, as well as chicken mole breakfast.
RandomMonster
Well, they pointed out that she laughs. Because that apparently is something normal people don’t do.
azlib
Yes, I worked at a burger place in Austin, TX on the 10:00 PM to 1:00 Am shift. It was brutal at $.95 / hour. The worst job was cleaning up under the soft serve machine.
Suzanne
@BR: It is the same in PHX. A vibrant and varied tapestry of breakfast burritos. The breakfast burrito situation here in PGH is barren and desolate. And that’s despite living in a neighborhood with a growing Latino population. I guess you need critical mass to get breakfast burritos.
Maxim
@BR: Oh wow. As a Californian born and raised, that was painful to read.
Harrison Wesley
@TBone: Ah, Mushroom Valhalla (and a nice beer festival IIRC).
SatanicPanic
Confession time- Chicano man, grew up in SoCal. My wife is from the Midwest and she makes white guy tacos every now and then. We call it “Midwest Taco Night” and it’s fun. Yes, I am a bad Chicano, no I don’t care.
SatanicPanic
@BR: Damn dude I almost cried reading that.
Suzanne
@Leto: LOL!
She was hardcore about that stuff. That restaurant did not mess around with spice. I have no problem with habanero, ghost pepper, etc….. but 6/10 would leave my lips tingling for the rest of the afternoon. And she chowed down on 10/10 like it was nothing.
Suzanne
I really need to figure out somewhere cold to live that has -berto’s restaurants.
BR
@SatanicPanic:
Hah, yeah, I remember just staring at the food on the plate for what felt like hours (but was probably like 5 minutes) and then we were like “should we just go?”
Leto
@Suzanne: one of my favorite things was going to lunch at places like that with co-workers who actually loved spicy food. They’d lived in other countries who had the starter cuisine already at level 10. These white boys would roll up, ask for the spiciest thing, ofc the server was like… you sure? The server would bring out a 5, and they’d send it back. “No, I said your spiciest dish.” And that’s when that receipt would kick in. But they loved it. Goobers.
rikyrah
Barry Ritholtz (@Ritholtz) posted at 4:14 PM on Fri, Aug 16, 2024:
Wow, this is from GOP pollster @FrankLuntz:
“I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this, because they don’t exist as undecided voters,” he said.
https://t.co/i9B6DI8ac8
(https://x.com/Ritholtz/status/1824555443374391567?t=glM-M7PSWf4ujW3JVfRNLQ&s=03)
Geoduck
Since Project 2025 was mentioned, evidently its writers have a whole other section of the thing that’s so horrible they don’t dare release it until they’re actually in power.
BR
@Suzanne:
I think SoCal might have some spots for you — basically all the mountain towns in the ring from Mount Baldy to Mount San Jacinto. And same in San Diego County. The mountains are so steep so you go from the bustle of SoCal with all its food options to quiet (and colder) mountain town at 5000 ft elevation in a 20 minute drive.
Leto
@BR: it’s how we felt about Italian places here. Supposedly all these great Italian American places, and like eemom at #32: egg noodles and ketchup. We went to one place and I swore they served me a Stoffer’s lasagna. The secret at that point is to learn to make your own. You’ll be better off in every way.
VFX Lurker
Oh, I do love garlic. One condiment I’ve ladled onto my breakfast all week has been “O.G.” Zindrew chili oil, which has a mild chili kick and lots of delicious garlic.
Some garlic humor: one of my favorite recurring clips on Dark Corners Reviews has three guys around a table discussing how to get rid of vampires.
“Garlic. A lot of garlic. Garlic up to your ASS.”
rikyrah
Tiff4Mahogany_44 🇺🇸 NATO MEMBER (@tiff4mahogany) posted at 6:12 PM on Fri, Aug 16, 2024:
VP Harris is going to speak directly to the American people. She isn’t going to allow the beltway press to help Trump define her.
She saw what you jackals & hyenas did to Obama, HRC, and Biden.
(https://x.com/tiff4mahogany/status/1824585143438246230?t=WQHYSFUkksg6_eeGaYGlgw&s=03)
TBone
@Harrison Wesley: 💙 I am so homesick.
There’s a DelCo Pirate Festival soon too…
https://marcushookps.org/piratefestival.php
Suzanne
@Leto: One of my coworkers here in PGH has lived here all her life, and she always says, “Pittsburgh is a foodie town”. And, like, there are some good places. But the Mexican and Asian cuisines are W E A K. I guess there’s more Eastern European foods here, which always feel like Voyaging With Fried Dough. Which…. not my deal.
bbleh
I *LOVE* spicy food. My relatives give me dare-stuff for grins, it’s that bad. But when I was in DC I knew a guy who had served at the embassy in Thailand, and he knew a Thai couple who had a food stand down in Georgetown (this was when such things still existed) who prepared stuff “home-style.” He said beware, I can only stand it about 2/3. I ordered 1/3 and I could barely taste anything but heat.
And yes as observed above, Asians have only had chilis since the Portuguese brought them over from the Americas. That certainly seems to have been a fortuitous meeting …
Suzanne
@BR: Yeah, the problems are 1) getting a job in my field (largely concentrated in urban areas), and 2) affording it. We wanted to move to Denver instead of Pittsburgh when we left Phoenix, but it was already ludicrously expensive in 2020 and now is even more so.
Tony Jay
@BR:
Can you imagine for a second what would have happened if my lot had found Central America first?
“Ask him, what are these red and green sprouts? Are they barbarian turnips?”
“He says they are, how is it in English, cold things. For adding to beans.”
“A condiment, eh? Let’s see.”
Takes bite.
Six months pass.
“Lady Winterbuttock. It is my sad duty to inform you that your husband passed away while exploring lands south of Aztekland and claiming them for England. He was poisoned by treacherous natives with a toxic root that causes a civilised man’s flesh to boil on contact. Rest assured, we have burnt all sources of this noxious ‘Fire Carrot’, and in so doing have made all the world a safer place.”
Chet Murthy
I spent 2.5yr working fast-food full-time during and after high school, before going to college. It was a real learning experience, and I have always known that -real- work is fast-food work. I’ve spent decades as a programmer, and sure you pull long shifts. But it’s nothing like spending a double-shift Saturday flipping hamburgers, that’s for sure.
Hot food …. boy howdy. I have a calibration mechanism for Thai spicy chicken with basil: it’s hot enough, when within a few bites I start to sneeze. If I sneeze too much, that means too much heat, and if I don’t sneeze at all, it’s time to reach for the chili powder.
Pete Downunder
If you are looking for a Mexican food desert come to Australia. We have a couple of “Mexican” chains that aspire to dismal, one is even contemplating expanding to the states. If they go to CA or TX they will be laughed out of town. The big problem is that we have no Mexicans here and also don’t grow many of the ingredients. People ask if I miss the US (native New Yorker transplanted to SF bay area) and my response is no except for Mexican food. My Aussie friends generally can’t deal with spice. Australian food is improving thanks to European and Asian immigration but historically it was bland and horrible. As Bill Bryson pointed out in his book about Australia (In a Sunburned Country) Captain James Cook who claimed Australia for the Brits beat a French explorer by only a few days, thus, as Bryson said, dooming Australians to 200 years of English cooking.
CaseyL
I’ve gotten *less* heat tolerant, culinarily, as I get older, possibly because I burned the hell out of my mouth, tongue and throat a few times and my body said, “Yeah, no, we’re not doing that ever again.”
I still love international food, but order it with zero or one star just to make sure it won’t burn me.
Eolirin
@zhena gogolia: Not entirely. We’ve got decent places in NYC and up north into at least Poughkeepsie. It’s not as good as the West Coast or even Chicago, but it’s not nothing.
BR
@Tony Jay:
Hah. I will say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised when in the UK about the Asian food options of all sorts — not quite as spicy as I’d prefer but not bad at all. Never tried to find Mexican food though.
TBone
@Tony Jay: snort!
TBone
Late teens I worked at a Wendy’s once. Only lasted a few weeks, especially when I found out what the “cheese” actually is. It is not cheese.
KrackenJack
@Tony Jay: I did a Bangalore business trip with an American-born Indian friend. They asked us how we wanted our order. We both said, “medium.” His medium was easily ten times spicier than mine.
theturtlemoves
I had a job in high school at a Wendy’s in the Black Hills in SD during the 50th Anniversary Sturgis Rally. I was like 16 at the time so it didn’t seem so hideous but yeah, it was hard work. And my mother was raised on a farm near the North Dakota border. I think the first thing that was remotely spicy I ever ate was on a work trip to San Diego when I was well into my 20s, possibly early 30s, so yeah, upper Midwest food is monumentally bland.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia:
Where? The official store has stickers, but they won’t be available until September, last I looked.
:-/
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
JaySinWA
@zhena gogolia: I hadn’t thought about it before, but I probably have enough advertising magnets from mail and phone book drops to work as magnetic backing for a car sticker.
owlbrick
With this taco kerfuffle, they’re accusing Vance of stolen pallor.
Kay
Lol
not that there’s anything wrong with that!
JiveTurkin
Years ago I went to the New Mexico state fair and made the mistake of ordering hot tamales at food stand. I was asked point blank “do you want us to make it a little mild, it’s very spicy” and of course I said no. I discovered that spicy in New Mexico means SPICY. I spent the next half hour trying to get the spice off my tongue. As the saying goes, it was an own goal.
BR
Looks like the media and Big Brain pundits who were demanding Harris talk about economic ideas are now panning her ideas as “unserious” and such. WaPo editorial board rushed out an editorial trashing her proposals as “gimmicks”, some of the worthless Obama-era economist types are out there complaining about the proposals, and the Never Trumpers who never liked Dem populism to begin with are all griping. This is why proposing policies right now is a waste of time.
SatanicPanic
@BR: I’m waiting for some carnitas at a place off Clairemont Mesa right now. I’ll think of you and be extra grateful.
Delk
There’s at least a dozen Mexican places within walking distance of my place but thank heavens a Taco Bell just opened. /s
KrackenJack
@TheOtherHank: There was a restaurant in Honolulu called “El Crab Catcher.” I kid you not. Never went there, but I guffawed at the name every single time I saw it. It lasted for many years, so they must have found their clientele.
BR
@SatanicPanic:
Oh man. I’m thinking of all the late nights at Filibertos, Aibertos, Pokez, Don Carlos, and the rest. Too good.
Kay
Governor Tim Walz
@GovTimWalz
12m
We’re leveraging historic infrastructure funding to improve safety, cut down on travel time, and attract business development. It’s an exciting day!
JD Vance sneers and finishes preparing a speech on pre-menopausal females
Geoduck
@Pete Downunder: I always laugh at the (possibly apocryphal) story Bryson recounts in his book- a man was visiting Australia and stopped at a small town restaurant where he was presented with a very substandard piece of meat, and hesitantly asked if he could also have some salad. The waitress’s reply: “The barstard thinks it’s Christmas!”
Nix Besser
@$8 blue check mistermix: Maybe so, but the whole Runza concept speaks to me. Ground beef and cabbage in a pastry? Oh, yeah!! We did a cross-country road trip a couple of years ago and the Runza stop was a highlight.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: Ah, Ok.
Here are a few I’ve found:
Redbubble.com – Kamala Harris Magnets
Redbubble.com – Harris-Walz Magnets
There are lots and lots of other places, also too.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Harrison Wesley
@TBone: Wow – I thought they only had those in Florida. Gotta get back up there.
Another Scott
@Steve Holmes: An old boss had a story about telling a toddler that he couldn’t have a piece of chocolate because it was too spicy.
Humans can be so devious sometimes. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Fake Irishman
@Gretchen:
You don’t happen to be a state employee living in a mansion in Lansing by any chance?
laura
@Baud: Still side-eying my curb. I was promised (shakes fist at sky in old Abe Simpson).
Bostondreams
Barenaked Ladies? Perfect for the post, and still a good show in concert!
CaseyL
@Leto:
One of my first jobs was at KFC.
Back then, they got their chicken pieces raw and frozen in giant bags.
One of the things they had me do was clean the (thawed) chicken of tendons, bone bits that stuck out, and loose bits of fat and skin. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever done, to the point where I’d gag when I went into the kitchen. I didn’t last long at that job, and it was a VERY long time before i could eat chicken again!
Nix Besser
@TBone: And the Michoacana ice cream stand. And the Taqueria y Carniceria Guadalajara, where you can get bulk al pastor and loads of other stuff.
Elizabelle
You are angels, whether in polyester or whatever. Satby’s fundraiser is $75 from completion, and you jackals did that! A little patient in a tuxedo suit has a brighter, healthier (OK, less constipated) future.
This place is amazing.
raven
@Leto: I wanted to catch you with this from earlier. This is McLlehheny’s helmet with the dent the Japanese Solider put in it when he hit him and the pistol the Lt shot him with.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@BR: for the longest time, Dominicans ran the “Mexican” restaurants of the Northeast. Your safest bet was the Ceasar salad.
RandomMonster
We call them honky tacos.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: What’s the new car? Congrats.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia:
Any decent-sized city in the Northeast has enough of a Mexican population to support a few restaurants, but they will generally be in the neighborhoods white folks don’t go to. Several good options here in PVD, for instance (and my DIL is Mexican, so I’m not talking through my hat.)
NutmegAgain
@BR: Ha ha foreign. One of my aunts told me that they never had broccoli on the table b/c is was “foreign”. My grandmother came from the Canadian Maritimes.
zhena gogolia
@owlbrick: Paging NotMax!
chemiclord
I’m sure they could find plenty of stuff to drag Harris over… the problem is they see a woman of color and their brains short-circuit, going straight into the racism. They literally can’t stop themselves.
satby
@Elizabelle: thanks Elizabelle, for helping me and Buddy thank everyone!
twbrandt
Native Michigander here. From 2012-2016 I worked for a Bay Area startup. 3 of the 4 founders were Indian, and many of my colleagues were Indian. They took me to the places they liked, and I learned a lot about good Indian food while I was there. There are a lot of great Indian and Pakistani restaurants in the Bay Area because so many live there. Unfortunately, there aren’t many good Indian restaurants here in SE Michigan. There are a lot of good Mexican places because there is a sizable Mexican population in Detroit.
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: I see they do sell blank magnets for car bumper stickers from various sources. Of course I understand most bumpers aren’t metal any more, so they are car body stickers.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle: Nothing too exciting.
JCJ
@bbleh: Quite a while ago my future wife and I stopped by a roadside restaurant outside of Bangkok. I had been in Thailand for three months by that time so I was fairly used to spice. She got chicken with basil leaves, extra spicy. Even though we were outside the spice made me cough. It was amazingly good but wow was it spicy! I could eat one bite then I had to drink a ton of ice water before eating more
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: a stealth car. Very good.
Salty Sam
HA HA HA, my wife is from northern Minnesota too, huge family – I just got back from a visit to Grand Marais for a nieces wedding. They have a huge 4th July party every year, with a big feast on Saturday. One year I was asked to do a Shrimp Boil, so (we were living on the Texas Gulf coast at the time) we got 20 pounds of fresh shrimp, drove ‘em up there and did a classic Shrimp Boil. Salty Spouse warned me to go easy on the spicy, which I did.
There was one aunt who was interested in how the whole thing came together- potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp. She made a comment about “how nice that there’s sweet corn in there.”
After it was all cooked, and we dumped the food out on newspaper covered tables and people started helping themselves, I heard her exclaim “OOOH! I never knew corn could be SO SPICY!!”
Meanwhile, I was dumping hot sauce on my plate so I could recognize the dish.
Bupalos
Did you guys actually watch that Trump “presser” from his front porch?
I mean, I know it’s old news to the 24 hour news cycle folks, but OMFG. He gave a possibly effective stream of regular political lies for 40 minutes that probably at least staunched the bleeding, because it’s really easy to get up in front of America and pick out a bunch of extremely short sighted issues for them and claim you’re going to kick all the cans down all the roads so they can go back to watching their favorite shows.
And then….
OMFG the dude just went in to stream-of-semi-consciousness goat bleating for the next 40+ minutes. It’s semi-hypnotic jam-band stuff that wears sooooo thin soooo fast. He has a beat that he flows to, and he just fills up that beat with mumbo-jumbo nonsense punctuated by “immigrant” “animal” “nation” “destroyed” “gas prices” “drill…” just absolute and total filler material.
He’s selling candy to kids and he might actually fail to make that sale if we exert ourselves here. Because even sugar-thirsty three year olds know there’s something a little off here. And we can maybe get peanut butter celery across the finish line this cycle.
SomeRandomGuy
I will call out on inaccuracy with the reporting: I believe he said that black pepper was the most *exotic* spice, and onion powder, taco seasoning, canned green chiles, etc. were all on supermarket shelves 40+ years ago.
A pedant could certainly insist that black pepper is, in a real sense, less exotic than canned green chiles, but language doesn’t exist to satisfy pedants. It’s just as accurate to say “40 years on supermarket shelves makes everything in the recipe not-a-bit-exotic.”
Of course, the entire “controversy” is analyzing a playful discussion where no one was trying to be rigorous.
Prometheus Shrugged
@SatanicPanic: Carmen’s? Or further east? Or maybe bulk carnitas from La Tiendita?
Fake Irishman
@twbrandt:
SE Michigan is also amazing for Arabic food. The twin cities and Madison have excellent Laotian food.
TF79
I grew up in Walz’ southern MN district, and taco night was precisely as he described. Unseasoned ground beef on cardboard-esque hard taco shells with grated cheddar cheese and maybe some sad-ass iceberg lettuce (depending on the season). The words “flavor” and “spice” are used approximately interchangeably.
Phein64
@Salty Sam: When my in-laws come to visit us in what they consider the Deep South (central Illinois), my MIL makes a point of telling me to make sure to cook some “regular” food for her (my FIL will eat anything).
Math Guy
@JiveTurkin: New Mexico spicy is its own category of spicy food.
Josie
I grew up on the Texas Mexico border and thought I knew about hot and spicy food until we vacationed in New Mexico. I had no idea!
twbrandt
@Fake Irishman: I live in Dearborn, pretty much ground zero for Arabic food. Even the other ethnic restaurants around here – Thai, Chinese, Mexican – all advertise that they are halal.
sab
I made Amy Klobuchar’s hotdish and is was a bit spicy (pepperjack for the cheese.) My staffordshire terrier is a very picky eater and she loved it. Scarfed it down for dinner three nights in a row. My husband tolerated it for one meal, but no way was it gonna be his leftover.
Bupalos
@TF79: I think what Walz is doing here is both a mild lie and a kind of mistake.
Minnesota is in fact popping. It has an extremely diverse population and is one of the current centers of immigration and diversity in the country. As he’s rightly noted, it’s among (if not THE) happiest state in the union, and it isn’t because it’s bland and white and has white boy tacos.
This is selling on the stereotype. This was maybe true 40 years ago. It isn’t now. The twin cities are prime jewels in America’s crown. Carleton is probably America’s single best undergrad liberal arts college. The food scene in Minneapolis is excellent. The rivers and lakes are stunning, and surrounded by verdant beauty. Over towards the beautiful blue great lake is one of the most ecologically resilient places for climate change on the planet. Things change. No one seems to get that.
Walz has to sell the old existing brand because that’s how marketing works. But it isn’t true.
dr. luba
@twbrandt: True. I learned to eat Indian food in India, and don’t really bother around here. But there are great Mexican places and truly wonderful middle Eastern cuisine. Have you been to Hamtramck for Yemeni food?
The Lodger
@Harrison Wesley: The Mexican food and beer fest must have started less than 44 years ago, when I was working in the area. I remember nothing of the sort in Southern Chester County.
SatanicPanic
@Prometheus Shrugged: El Rey Moro. Wanted to give bit a try…. It’s ok. Carmen’s is pretty good, I only had their chicken tho
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@BR: The spread of chilly peppers is actually the best argument against any claim that anyone from Africa/Europe/Asia visited the the Americas before Columbus: they spread so quickly that any sustained prior contact should also have spread the plants – but didn’t.
Christopher Columbus may not have been the first person from the old world to visit the new, but he was definitely the first person to tell people about it.
twbrandt
@dr. luba: I have not! I should correct that.
MagdaInBlack
@Bupalos: Was that the one today at Bedminster? I treated myself to watching the one with the cereal boxes, where he was supposed to talk economics and instead did, as you say, stream of consciousness babble with a beat.
surfk9
@BR: Dude, you forgot Robertos
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@SomeRandomGuy: obligatory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lozPEst45sA
Gretchen
Gin & Tonic
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
The Vikings visited Newfoundland centuries before Columbus landed in the Caribbean, but that’s not really known as a chili-growing area.
Gvgg something illeagle
@BR: And rice is now in most “Mexican” food I have eaten lately. Mexico now grows a lot of rice in its swampy areas. I thought that was weird when I noticed. It was not a part of the cuisine when I was a kid.
Unfortunately for me, my digestive system has gone finicky and I will probably never eat much heat or spice again.
Gretchen
@dr. luba: I’m from Detroit, but have also lived in Chicago, Omaha and Kansas City. Most of the people my age don’t do spice. My Milwaukee husband is the exception.
His other joke is trying to put black pepper on my eggs, because I hate it – too spicy for me. I haven’t had the heart to tell my son in law that I hate his favorite spice blend, heavy on the pepper.
Prometheus Shrugged
@SatanicPanic: That’s pretty much my take on El Rey Moro too (can’t really remember the last time I ate there). I’ve been on a cochinita pibil kick lately, and I can’t get enough of Cuchina 35’s version of chilaquiles topped with it. We get the catering pack from them and eat it all week long, any time of the day.
Gretchen
@BR: My Irish mom thought garlic was from the devil. One of the many things she hated about my first boyfriend was that he got me to eat garlic. Then I married an Italian…..
Sister Golden Bear
@VeniceRiley: THE Tito’s Tacos — like the one in Culver City?!
Attempted Chemistry
My son works at a Thai place, and he says that the white and Asian levels of spicy are off by 1 1/2 steps: Asian mild is spicier than white people medium.
HinTN
@JaySinWA: Sadly, car bodies are aluminum these days. I had magnetic stickers made and they work great on my 2006 Tundra. Massive fail on the 2022 RAV4. Sigh
Gvg
RSA
Not fast food for me, but a back-of-the-house dishwasher/pot scrubber job. I’d come home soaking wet from knees to shoulders, exhausted and smelling of detergent and Italian scraps. I don’t regret any of that time.
SatanicPanic
@Prometheus Shrugged: oh those Cucina 35 chilaquiles are so good. I’ve been trying spots in Barrio Logan and if you’re ever down there Toda pa la Cruda is really good. La Fachada is good too, but it looks like an old auto shop haha.
@Gvgg something illeagle: must be a regional thing cause we always had Spanish rice
BigJimSlade
@RepubAnon:
Lol, I love it!
TF79
@Bupalos: oh the cities are a great place, to be sure. Vibrant and diverse and exciting. Walz is not from there.
Gretchen
@SomeRandomGuy: He didn’t say pepper is exotic. He said it was at the top of the spice level he can handle. I can’t even handle black pepper- hate the stuff – so I’m pretty sure there are a lot of old white midwestern people that applies to.
BR
@surfk9:
For whatever reason I didn’t eat at Robertos much, but yeah they were the OG.
Gretchen
@Bupalos: People keep saying that the white people stereotype isn’t true because Minneapolis is very diverse and has spicy restaurants. You’re missing the point. The over-65 white people aren’t eating there. I’m one of them. Sure, the Somalis and Mexicans and young people are eating spicy food. The fact that those people are eating spicy doesn’t contradict the stereotype that most old white people don’t eat spicy.
Gretchen
@dr. luba: Interesting that Hamtramck is a Mecca for Yemenese food. When I was in high school, you could live your entire life speaking only Polish – Polish newspapers, Polish-speaking grocery cashiers, mass in Polish. The kids joined the Polish scouts, went to Polish scout camp where they spoke Polish and saluted the Polish flag. I guess those kids all live in the suburbs now. I went to high school with a lot of those kids and spent a lot of time in Hamtramck.
surfk9
@BR: Las Quatros Milpas in Barrio Logan is the best Mexican food in San Diego, their chorizo de oyo is off the chart
frosty
@Leto: That goes for any generation. Howard Johnson’s for me, working in the dishroom at $1.25 an hour.
frosty
@BR: Yes, Baldy Village is like living in a National Park but 30 minutes from freeways, good restaurants, and SoCal civilization.. The only problems are wildfires, floods, and debris flows. Plus the earthquake any day now.
12xuser
@RepubAnon: I remember thinking that the mild sauce at Zapata (or Zantigo or whatever) was just pointless heat, no flavor, in the early 70s. I have evolved since then, lol.
12xuser
@Gretchen: I’m 70+, living in Mpls suburb and I love me some spicy food, as do most of the people I know. That said, the “Minnesotans cant abide spice” meme is cool and funny and we fuckin own it here.
Soprano2
We have a restaurant here called Mexican Villa. Most of the locals love it, most people who come here from places where they have “real” Mexican food can’t stand it. I like it but I was raised here. They have hot sauce that’s quite hot. They used to keep it on the table for unsuspecting people to eat, that usually only happened once. I think the health department finally made them quit doing that. I knew a man who ate there after he quit smoking and said he had no idea that stuff was that hot when he was a smoker. I guess he covered his enchilada with it like he had when he smoked. 😅😅
This is also the home of Springfield Cashew Chicken, which is an American dish made at Chinese restaurants. Mr. Leong was trying to figure out a dish Ozarkers would eat, so he invented cashew chicken. If you haven’t had it here you probably haven’t had the real thing. Other places that have it on the menu put vegetables in it! That’s not right – it’s chunks of fried chicken, cashews, oyster sauce, and chopped green onions – nothing else! It’s not Chinese, but if you like it it’s an addiction. People who came here to go to college always want to have it when they come back here.
Citizen Alan
@Gretchen: I was the only person in my extended family who liked any kind of non-traditional spices. I don’t think my mom ever used any spices except salt, pepper, and sage (the last only in chicken and dressing). My dad considered Pizza Hut to be foreign food. I don’t think he ever had a taco.
Origuy
I grew up in in southern Indiana in a family where pizza was ethnic food; Dad was a meat and potatoes man. Then I went to school in Champaign and broadened my horizons somewhat. I’d been living in California for a few years when I started going to the Twin Cities for work. There was a place called Sri Lanka Curry House that offered Mild, Medium, Hot, and Extra Hot; they refused to serve non-Indians Extra Hot unless they had been there before. I had a co-worker who tried it once and it was almost too hot for him, even though he regularly ate spicy food back in California. I never ventured past Hot. There was also a Thai place in St Paul that was serious about the spice; my mouth burned the rest of the night.
Origuy
@dr. luba: There is such a thing as a Mexican pasty, or paste. After Mexican independence, the government freed the slaves and nationalized the silver mines. This left them with mines but no one to work them. They contracted with an English company who brought over Cornish miners and their families. The women made the pasties as they had always done, and taught the local women to make them for the single men. The local women added spice to the traditional Cornish, and invented other varieties like mole and tinga. When the Cornish went home, the locals in Hidalgo continued making pastes; there is an International Pasty Festival in the town of Real de Monte, Hidalgo, every year. There’s also a food truck in Santa Clara, CA, that sells them.
NWO Joe
@Gretchen: I’m not sure how true it is in Central MN where my dad grew up now as I haven’t been near the place in some time. I grew up in SD and it was like that the last time I went out there. Their idea of “hot” food is so bland. I think some of it comes from how scarce anything people take for granted now was, especially back in the 60s and 70s. I remember iceberg lettuce being the only available fresh green leafy vegetable in winter, at 5 bucks a head in January. The ingredients were very plain. Pork roast with canned white potatoes and sauerkraut. “Swiss Steak”.
I remember my mom back in the late 60s deciding to make us something adventurous instead of the pot roast and potatoes thing – lasagna. It was made with canned Hunts spaghetti sauce, hamburger, egg noodles, and Velveeta. So basically, hot dish. Us kids loved it of course and didn’t know any better. I still remember my first taste of real lasagna. It was a revelation.
Loving this thread, like a trip back in time to the land where everything is flat!
LarryB
This thread is killing me. Mrs. LarryB and l moved to the south of France last year. They put mayonnaise and french fries in their “tacos” here. I could cry.
EireIAm
@BR: coming from the Bay Area the Mexican food situation here in Ireland is dire. Can’t even get decent ingredients.
it does seem the next big foody trend here is Mexican. Many places opened since 2021, many run by immigrants from Mexico.
ChrisSherbak
@Suzanne: I cannot express to you how bummed I am that they are sold out of sweatpants AND there’s no Gwen Walz merch. DO BETTER HARRIS-WALZ!! p.s. so I went ahead and pledged 20$/mo to ease my pain. Also, those Coach lanyards are SWEET!
BigJimSlade
@BR: I’m late to this, but… while it’s not Mexican, Boston still has Chacarero (Chilean sandwiches). The hot sauce is actually hot! and the sandwiches are both different and good :-) Otherwise I used to go to the burrito cart at downtown crossing (all of this was 15+ years ago) – now they (Herrera’s) have a storefront on the street.
Kayla Rudbek
@Phein64: Christmas for me as a kid was giving thanks that I was Catholic and not Scandinavian. Mr. Rudbek didn’t believe me when we first started dating about how lutefisk was prepared.