Breakfast tacos. The food of the gods. Delicious, hot warm flour tortillas filled with a variety of combinations of ingredients such as scrambled eggs, chorizo (spicy Mexican sausage), fried potatoes, refried beans, bacon, and cheese topped with real salsa. A staple of Texas cuisine, the breakfast taco is one of the foods that appear in my As The World Dies trilogy alongside peach cobbler, fried chicken, fajitas, and enchiladas. Since the trilogy is about two women surviving together in a zombie-infested apocalyptic Texas, I wanted imbue the story with the flavor of the state, both literally and figuratively.
Food is vital for life, but it can also be an essential instrument in storytelling.
One of my favorite scenes in Fighting to Survive (As The World Dies, Book 2), is an interaction that takes place as Jenni and Katie, our female leads, are on guard duty on the wall encompassing their safe haven. As they survey the grisly zombies below, Jenni happily chows down on her breakfast taco:
Katie wasn’t sure how Jenni could eat with that awful smell wafting up from below, but from her work as a prosecutor, she knew that abused women developed extraordinary coping skills. She’d seen how adept Jenni was at disassociating herself from bad things going on around her. Sometimes Katie wished she could do that, too, just step away from the horrible reality she now lived in.Jenni eating in the gory presence of zombies serves two purposes: her breakfast tacos are a cultural reminder of the story stetting in Texas, and her disregard of the dead as she eats is a reminder that she’s acclimated to the dead world.
Besides, breakfast tacos are so good, how could you resist eating them?!
For a delicious breakfast taco recipe, click
here.
Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Rhiannon!
Rhiannon Frater is the award-winning author of over a dozen books, including the
As the World Dies zombie trilogy (Tor), as well as independent works such as
The Last Bastion of the Living (declared the #1 Zombie Release of 2012 by Explorations Fantasy Blog and the #1 Zombie Novel of the Decade by B&N Book Blog), and other horror novels.
Her latest releases are
In Darkness We Must Abide (self-published),
The Mesmerized (Permuted Pres), and
Dead Spots (Tor).
She was born and raised a Texan and presently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and furry children (a.k.a pets). She loves scary movies, sci-fi and horror shows, playing video games, cooking, dyeing her hair weird colors, and shopping for Betsey Johnson purses and shoes.
You can find her online at:
Email: rhiannonfrater at gmail dot com
If you’re anything like me, then when a friend asks, “Hey, do you wanna go to Taco Tuesday at that new place over by–” you interrupt with, “Whoa whoa whoa. You had me at taco.” I was flipping through one of my favorite Oxford volumes, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink edited by renowned food historian Andrew F. Smith, and came across the entries for both Taco and Taco Bell. After reading some surprising sections aloud to fascinated colleagues, I decided I couldn’t keep these morsels to myself. “Oh please,” you might say, “I already know all there is to know about tacos!” No, my good sir/lady, I don’t think you do. So in advance, you’re welcome. –Lauren Appelwick, Blog Editor
Tacos
In Mexico the word “taco,” which means a bite or snack, came to refer to a particular genre of edibles – a tortilla wrapped or folded around a filling [...] (The traditional Mexican taco is made with a soft, fresh corn tortilla; “hard shell” tacos, made with tortillas fried in a basket to give them a sturdy “U” shape, are a creation of Mexican restaurants in the United States.) The first known English-language taco recipes appeared in California cookbooks beginning in 1914.
[...] Until the 1960s tacos were mainly served in California and the Southwest at small roadside taco stands run by Mexican Americans. This changed when Glen Bell launched the first Mexican American fast food franchise in 1962 in Downey, California. Taco Bell had to overcome vast distrust and prejudice among many American consumers against Mexican restaurants. The new chain’s advertising emphasized that these were American restaurants that just happened to server Mexican-style food. Taco Bell assured the public that it’s tacos and other offerings were no more spicy or “foreign” than hamburgers. [...]
Taco Bell
During the early 1950s, few Americans outside California and the Southwest knew what a taco was. In the early twenty-first century Mexican American food is one of America’s fastest-growing cuisines. Although there are many reasons for this change, one was the Taco Bell fast food chain launched by Glenn Bell.
Bell operated a one-man hamburger and hot dog stand in San Bernardino, California, but he liked eating Mexican take-out food. Taco stands dotted the southern California landscape, but none offered fast food. Bell developed ways to improve the efficiency of preparing Mexican food. At the time, taco shells were made by frying soft tortillas for a few minutes. Bell invented a prefabricated hard taco shell, which did not have to be fried, thus saving time on each order. Bell also developed procedures for accelerating service.
Bell decided to test his new ideas. Bell opened a Taco Tia restaurant in 1954 in San Bernardino, California, the same year and the same city in which Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their revolutionary fast food establishment. Like the McDonald brothers, Bell quickly opened more restaurants in the surrounding area. Bell sold his interest in Taco Tia, and with new partners launched another chain, El Taco. The first outlet was opened in 1958 in Long Beach, California.
In 1962 Bell sold his share in El Taco to his partners and opened the first Taco Bell, in Downey, California. The menu consisted mainly of tacos and burritos plus beverages. This small outlet was quickly followed by eight stores in the Long
I’m not always into the old Tumblr (too much meat, not enough taters), but I’d like to the thank the good folks at Album Tacos for recognizing my contribution to their brilliant site. Not on the level of some the other photoshopped masterpieces, but I’m proud to be included.
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