True friends smuggle carne asada from California in their socks.

Parte Uno: Tacos

Philadelphia is proving to be a fantastic food city, particularly in the summer and fall, when local produce is abundant, restaurants try to lure in customers with unique offerings, and everyone has plenty of time for eating a long, slow dinner outside in the warm evenings. I love it. Except that, for me, the epitome of outside summer food is a taco. From a taco truck. And my California upbringing has instilled a ridiculously high standard for taco truck cuisine. Which is silly, since the taco I want doesn't meet the health standards, gets cooked in the back of a hot, stinky truck filled with hot, stinky guys, is loaded up with terribly unhealthy ingredients, and drips spicy orange grease everywhere.

I want one so bad.

So bad that I asked one of my fellow Californians to bring me back something I could turn into a taco in exchange for a ride home from the airport. Which is how, at 6:30 in the morning, I was greeted with a dripping plastic bag of raw carne asada.

I have good friends. Friends who share my absurd love of taco.

Anyway, tacos are very easy to make, although I rarely do it, because they're cheaper and more delicious when you get them from a truck on E.14th in Oakland. When you're in Philly, most taco ingredients can be found in the Italian Market and in little South Philly corner stores. They're of varying quality, so it's worth shopping around a little. The time of year matters too, although I'll never figure out when nopales are in season. Does it matter to a cactus pad what time of year it is? Can you grow big cacti plants in places with winter? Where are my cacti pads imported from? Why doesn't everyone ask these questions?

We also bought tortillas, despite having driven a tortilla press all the way across the country last year. I'm still experimenting with homemade tortillas. I think I need to add lard.

Ok, enough, now to the tacos!

Cook your carne asada well - it's been defrosting in the bottom of an airplane, and could well be poisonous.






We got some nopales too, for a more veggie-based taco, although I usually cover them in cheese, thus completely undermining their health benefits. They can be eaten raw, but for cheese-covering purposes, I usually boil them briefly, and then cook them in a pan with some queso fresco.

We cut up some radishes, onion, and cilantro to garnish our tacos, and we grilled some jalapeños in the toaster oven. The jalapeños really varied in spiciness: next time I'll probably add some directly to the nopales and carne asada so there's a more even flavor.



Everything turned out delicious, and while there wasn't any orange grease dripping out of my tacos, neither did we get horribly ill from the smuggled meat, so all in all it was a definite win.

Parte Dos: Fruta Sorpresa

While we were wandering around the Italian Market making impulse taco buys, we came across an ugly-looking fruit that neither of us had ever seen before. The "mamey sapote" was described as a cross between a coconut and a papaya, although after eating it and doing some google searches, I think a better description might be an avocado that tastes like a sweet potato.

We weren't very impressed.

And then my meat-smuggling friend decided that the fruit's pit smelled good (almond-y) and ate a piece of it while explaining the benefits of cyanide. Another google search, this time on the edible properties of a mamey sopote seed, was extremely inconclusive. Answers ranged from "the seed is said to be fatally toxic if eaten raw by humans or animals" to "use it as if it were nutmeg" to "grate it and add it to your shampoo."

Probably he'll survive.