Tacos for Ten

With three older brothers and three younger brothers, not to mention couple of feisty sisters, I shudder to think what the dinner table at Fellowship Street might have looked like, had the parents not had the situation well under control.

Having enough grub on hand to feed an army was only half the battle; figuring out how to get it to us without bloodshed was the other half. One did not want to get in-between a bunch of hungry O’Neill kids and the dinner table, or one was likely to draw back a stump. Until Kevin joined the tribe in 1966, there were only ten of us for tacos, including the chefs, but it still required some logistical genius to do crowd control.

The key was to give all of us an even playing field to begin with, and let the pack sort out the pecking order. As quaint as it sounds, we filled our plates first, before grace was said, and no one dared touch their portion until amens were concluded. That way everyone got an even break and no one got stabbed in the process.

Assembly-line style

Considering meat and potatoes, in countless combinations, made up the majority of our meals, tacos burst on our scene in the sixties, like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. There was no talk about soft or hard tacos-this was still in the infancy of Taco Bell stands, where tacos were available at five for $.99.

A guy could get a decent meal for a mere two bucks, plus the cost of a soda.

The menu on taco night at Fellowship Street consisted simply of browned hamburger with chile spice, grated cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, and sliced iceberg lettuce being loaded into soft flour tortillas. Cookie sheets were heaped up with bounty, and then baked in the oven at 400 degrees for ten minutes. 

The result was that flavor from all the ingredients blended together to form culinary nirvana, and enough tacos could be ready to come out of the oven at the start of dinner to keep us all supplied. Meanwhile, the next two cookie sheets went into the oven to get ready for the second onslaught, ten minutes later.

Interestingly enough, Papa brought this culinary delight home from the steel factory where he labored as a Heli-arc welder, alongside a workforce that was 90% black or Hispanic. About the same time we started camping in Baja, California, in the summer of 1963, Papa started making Mexican food for us for dinner. Rice and beans were cheap and could be bought in quantity for a further savings, and we were happy campers.

I rediscovered this dish a few nights ago, much to my own surprise, because it came out of nowhere. I have been eating tacos happily for 55 years now, sometimes soft and the rest of the time hard-shelled, but something right out of the blue made me assemble three soft-shell tacos the other night, and then place them reverently on a cookie sheet for their ten-minute sojourn in the oven.

The piping hot tomatoes, the cheese melted through everything and most interesting of all, the wilted lettuce, all combined to transport me back to Fellowship Street. I enjoyed the trip immensely and plan to return shortly, and can’t believe it took me so long to rediscover this gem.

Of course, it’s kind of boring eating tacos by myself, with no jockeying required for seconds, thirds, fourths, or even fifths, as long as we are still talking about tacos and not bourbon. Me father did enjoy a couple of cocktails while cooking up a storm.

I sure don’t blame him. After working all day long in the factory, he had to come home and help Mama cook dinner? Who wouldn’t need a shot or two of bourbon to get started on his second job? Or, if you’re me, a bong rip to get things started smoothly. A happy chef is a productive chef, and one who has had a bong rip is especially interested in the end result.

Having a cookie sheet filled with soft tacos, is the best imaginable cure for a case of the munchies in the universe.

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