One of Life's Great Pleasures

Those who know me well know that I love ethnic cuisines, but there is one which outshines all others according to my taste palate: Mexican food. It matters not whether it be authentic or Tex-Mex(though I do draw the line at Taco-Bell), I pretty much love it all. I can't think of too many family traditions that my family has, but eating at Mexican restaurants is one of them that draws us together. I can't even begin to tell you how many Sundays my family has spent enjoying the fabulously tasty goodness of Mexican food. I may not want to eat it every day, but every week?? Nooo problem. I currently find myself in a sad situation, however- in a country where people say, "What is salsa??" This seems a very tragic question to me, as salsa is the very foundation on which every good Mexican meal is built. Actually, I probably like salsa more than any other part of the meal. Salsa can be made pretty easily here, so that is not a problem. The acquiring of corn chips, however.....well, that seems to be an impossibility. People don't even know what they are.

So, as soon as I found out that my brother would be in Odessa for the weekend, I began to dream of going to one of the two or three "Mexican" restaurants here. After all, who better to go with than my brother, another great lover of Mexican cuisine? I had heard of one, but didn't exactly know where it was, but we decided to try to find it anyway. We wandered around and around in the center of town, asking multiple people if they knew where one was, with the answer always being no. Finally, a taxi driver told us there was one, but not near where we were. We decided to keep walking, because I had been told there was one in the center and we finally stumbled upon it.

We walked in and were greeted by the Ukrainian wait staff and sat down to examine the menus. We were so excited to see that they actually had chips and salsa, even though we had to pay $5 for it. We were curious to see what the chips would be like and once they arrived, we spent quite a quite a while trying to figure out what they reminded us of, until it finally hit me: hushpuppies!! They tasted like hushpuppies. So we enjoyed our small basket of hushpuppy chips and our two tablespoons of salsa that came along with them. We commented on how dad would have had a hard time with this, since he usually eats that much salsa with two chips. Will wanted to try the stuffed jalepenos, which turned out to be some other extremely hot, long red pepper, which about blew us away with its degree of heat. It was so hot that we didn't even end up eating the third one and you know that's saying a lot with our family. Dad would have enjoyed it, though.

We both got the chicken fajitas, which came out sizzling hot and were very tasty. I'm guessing the right spices are hard to get ahold of here, because the meat, peppers and onions were cooked in soy sauce. I really wanted to get the chimichanga, but the only option was rabbit chimichanga and I wasn't feeling that adventurous last night.

I did plan ahead and brought my camera along to record this wonderful event, but sadly, I forgot to recharge my battery after the trip down to the port and I only got one picture of this momentous occasion. It was extremely expensive and not quite Mexican, but still, very tasty and a lot of fun. I got my "Mexican" fix for the next little while until tomatoes are ripe again and I can make my own delicious salsa, chips, and other tasty goodness. Fun was had by all.