Mexican Food and Pictures

Thursday, we tried a new Mexican restaurant in town. I'm always hesitant to do this, as it's a sure bet the food we find will not be "New Mexican" food. That, we can handle, being 1200 miles from New Mexico and all. Unfortunately, it's often not even actually "Mexican", but rather more El Salvadorian or Guatemalan influenced.

(Not that those are bad, but they aren't Mexican, either, and yet they bill themselves as Mexican. I don't get it. Of course, if I were opening a restaurant, I wouldn't immediately decide that a Mexican-Chinese Buffet is the thing to do, either. Yet there are quite a few of those around the area. They all seem to be doing well, too. So, I'm guessing there are forces at work that are beyond my understanding.)

However, we were hungry and didn't want to eat in the car (the *best* Mexican food in Decatur has only drive-thru service, but it's worth eating in the car if you don't have a herd of tired children with you!) The food at this new place was different. Mostly good. The boys *loved* their enchiladas and tamales. We've never seen tamales served like this before...

The enchiladas looked identical. We could only tell the difference by eating a bite of each first.

Smidge chickened out at the last minute and ordered chicken nuggets. Normally, we don't go that route, but as you can see, he was feelin' the love...

EmBaby missed all the excitement. She woke up in time to get a Peppermint Patty at the register, though, so she wasn't too bummed about the whole thing. (And the nap did wonders for her general outlook!)

But this... this took us off guard... do you know what this is?

This is, at the new restaurant, a "chile relleno". It's in a BOWL, people! It's soupy! It has that white, floaty thing on top of it! This is so. incredibly. wrong. If you aren't familiar with chile rellenos, allow me to walk you through it. "chile", according to Dictionary.com, is -noun 2. very hot and finely tapering pepper of special pungency [syn: chili] and "relleno", –adjective 1. stuffed, esp. filled with cheese: chilis rellenos.

Or, better yet - –noun 2. a chili relleno. (Which, following this thought logically, would be "a tapering pepper stuffed with cheese". Or, something loosely resembling such.) Does anything in that bowl look like what I've just described? Other than that there is, clearly, cheese? No.

I kept waiting for Zorak to try some, and when I finally couldn't take it any longer and asked him when he was going to eat it, he laughed and said he was waiting for me to try it first. We ended up bringing it home. It didn't look any more appealing after the ride. I think he ate it last night, but he hasn't said anything, so I have no idea how it tasted.

And this last one wasn't taken at the restaurant (obviously). But this is how little JT spends most of his late afternoon naps - sprawled across my thighs, out cold, while EmBaby hovers over him, sticking things to his head and my pantlegs. Good stuff, that. Bonding time and all, you know. (Have I mentioned how incredibly patient this child is? One day, he will grow up, move out, and realize that nobody else has people hovering over them, in their faces, all. the. time. I hope he doesn't hold that against us...)

We didn't get any of the piers poured on the balcony, but we've got some snazzy batter boards up, the forms made, and the concrete ready for... next weekend. Zorak's going to be too busy with work this week to get anything done on it, and I'm just not up for trying to pour concrete with the littles tweaking the difficulty factor. I've neither the skill nor the patience for that one. But that's okay. It'll be there when we get to it.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy