Tacos

My family has a tradition. Maggie says that my family has a lot of traditions. One such tradition is a simple slice of heaven found inside a folded hot and greasy corn tortilla, with a pillow of the lightest and fluffiest pink jello ever imagined. Every birthday in my family is celebrated in the same way, tradition. On our birthday mom would let us choose what we wanted for breakfast and most of us had school so we would bring cookies to share with our classmates. My mom's chocolate chip cookies were famous in my school and I learned this early on. I could go to school with two cookies for my desert and trade for almost anything I wanted from my friends lunches. Usually I had two cookies so I would trade one and eat the other. Some days I would get lucky and there would be three cookies for desert then I had more leverage, two cookies for a bigger item, or sometimes I just ate them both with my friends drooling with desire. So because the cookies were so well known I would make sure that Mom and I made some the night before so that I could share with all of the class. After school was pretty normal except that I could smell the tacos being prepared. Now tacos in my family are not like tacos from a Mexican Restaurant and they certainly are not like Taco Bell. Mom would mix two pounds of ground meat with shredded potatoes, spices, and vinegar. This was placed in the oven and baked. When dad got home he would set up the electric fryer and fill up the fryer with vegetable oil until the entire bottom was covered with to about half an inch. Once the oil was heated dad would take the corn tortillas and lay them into the hot vegetable oil. He then used two forks to hold it down waited about thirty seconds and then folded the shell and put the hot shell on a cookie sheet that was lined with paper towels to soak up the vegetable oil. Mom would then spoon out some of the cooked hamburger potato mixture into the taco, one of us older kids would add shredded cheese and then the process would continue until the entire cookie sheet was full, two across and about twenty down. Because my family was so large we usually made sixty tacos. While the tacos were being made and set on the cookie sheet the other brothers and sisters were assigned to wash and break up the lettuce, wash and cut the tomatoes, set the table, and put the hot sauce out. The kitchen was full of people. Everyone in their stations tended to sample their work just to make sure that it tasted alright. We could go through one head of lettuce, a pound of cheese, three or four tomatoes, and half a jar of moms homemade salsa/hot sauce. Now the fluffy jello had been made earlier in the day. To start mom would put a can of sweetened condensed milk in the fridge to get it cold. Once cold she would make jello on the stove just as the recipe says to make it but once it was cooked and all of the powdered jello was dissolved she would set it aside for just a minute while she took out the sweetened condensed milk and put it into the mixer. This was beaten until fluffy and the jello was then added and mixed. Usually she also added a small container full of whipped topping to the mix. Once the beaten sweetened condensed milk turned pink it would be put in the fridge and chilled before dinner. Thus the pillow of pink fluffy jello was ready to be consumed. With the Jello and the tacos on the table it was time to eat. Before the meal began we said a prayer. I think that I was most thankful for this meal over any other ever made. After the prayer dad would remind us that we could only have three tacos. They put a limit on the goodness because there were a lot of us to feed and they also knew that if we were allowed to keep eating we would eat until all of them were gone. Once I was at my dad's mom's house, grandma's, and she let us eat as many as we wanted. I think I ate seven or eight before my tummy almost burst and I had to stop. I am pretty sure that one of my uncles still holds the record for the most tacos eaten at one time and that was fifteen or sixteen. My plate had three tacos piled high with the lettuce, tomatoes, and hot sauce and pink fluffy jello on the side. Pink fluffy jello melted in my mouth. There was never a limit on how much of the pink fluffy jello we could have but we had to move fast because once it was gone it was gone. With the tacos we would occasionally start with one on our plate and try to just do one at a time so that we could sneak a forth one but when caught we would claim we had miscounted and since it was already on our plate beg forgiveness and eat it anyway. The younger siblings always complained when we got one more than they did even if they could only eat two. We had this meal for every birthday. I looked forward to this tradition every time a birthday came up. Tradition!