Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

5778

Abstract

zechoslovakia. My mother and her family celebrated when Hitler’s tanks panzered their way into the country.Consequently, my mother cooked nothing but German food; the food she grew up with and the only food she knew how to cook. I did not eat Chinese food for the first time until I was seventeen years old. I was fifteen the first time I ate pizza. I had my first enchilada at sixteen. As I started gaining some freedom in my teenage years I discovered that there is a whole world of wonderful cuisines out there and I began resenting the fact that I had been shielded from it by my mother.My mother believed that eating garlic created sexual craving. Therefore, to her, it was evil — and certainly not something to feed to children. She vehemently refused to allow garlic in her kitchen. I was eighteen years old when I first discovered that garlic even existed (and I’ve been eating it practically every single day ever since).Looking over those index cards my mother had given me I decided to make gulasch. I brought the index card with me to the grocery store and bought all the necessary ingredients. It turned out fairly well and it tasted just like my mother’s gulasch.But why eat what I had always eaten? Once I had my own kitchen domain I dived headlong into learning about cooking. I bought cookbooks and tried to make all the food that I never had growing up. I did a lot of research and experimenting. I wanted to have a repertoire of perfected dishes. I wanted to have dinner parties.But I always eventually came back to that gulasch. I decided I wanted to make it better. My research showed me that my mother’s gulasch was not the same as any gulasch recipe out there. My mother’s gulasch was essentially a meat stew with cubed beef and pork with lots of onions. The primary spices used were paprika and ground caraway. Just before the stew was ready sour cream was added to make it creamy and yummy and it was served with potatoes.The one thing missing from my mother’s recipe, which seemed to be included in every other recipe I came across, was garlic. So I added garlic to my mother’s recipe and it turned out way, way better!Over the next ten years I continued experimenting and finally came up with my very own gulasch recipe that was so much better than my mother’s. While I perfected many other dishes, gulasch became the meal I would prepare for times of celebration.It also became the go-to first meal that I would cook for a date. My dating regimen back then started out with a few typical dates — movies and eating out — and then finally the invitation to my place for a home-cooked meal. It was never far from the dining table to the bedroom. Often, the first time I slept with a woman I did so with a belly full of gulasch.When asked what I was serving for dinner I started answering, ‘Czechoslovakian Gulasch.’ To answer simply with, ‘gulasch,’ was boring and certainly not very sexy. ‘Czechoslovakian Gulasch’ raised eyebrows. It almost sounded exotic. And it was something absolutely no one had ever heard of before, much less eaten before. While the naming of my signature dish was a half-assed way of honoring my mother, it was mostly an attempt to make myself out as an exciting, adventurous chef who knew what the hell he was talking about.It worked.At the age of twenty-eight, ten years after my mother gave me those index cards, I got married. The culinary expertise of the woman I married was very, very, very limited. She knew how to boil water and make toast. And that was it!She was a bit embarrassed by that but I did not mind one bit. At that point in my life I was convinced that the way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach. I thrilled at doing all the cooking.Oh my God! Did I become just like my mother?!No, no, no! Absolutely not! Surely not! No way! Yeah, I became the master of my kitchen domain and I did all the cooking but we also ate out occasionally. Plus, I tried to cook as many different types of cuisine as I could (and I continued experimenting). I certainly did not want our daughter to be deprived of culinary diversity the way I was as a child. No, I was an improved version of my mother!But I am getting ahead of myself…It was near the end of our first year of marriage that my newlywed bride and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. For many years Santa Fe had been my favorite city in America. I had visited there every chance I got and I desperately wanted to move there. The feeling one feels being in Santa Fe is the closest one can get to the feeling of being in some foreign city while still being in America. It is an old, ancient city and there is so much diversity there! And culture. And art. And beauty!Being newlyweds in love only added to the city’s charm.I was a writer and my bride was an actress. But we desperately needed a roof over our head so I got a job at a bookstore and my wife got a job working at a hot dog and churro vending cart on the historic downtown plaza. My wife got the better job.Can you imagine selling hot dogs and churros from a vending cart on the corner by the art museum in one of the most historic places in America? The woman who owned the cart and had hired my wife was a thoroughly delightful person with whom one could converse endlessly with. She trained my wife in everything one needed to know about running a vending cart and she explained all the intricacies of hot dogs and churros. My wife’s culinary expertise su

Options

ddenly doubled.One of the challenges of the job was keeping the pigeons away. One of the benefits was meeting a lot of celebrities. It was the Eighties and a lot of the Hollywood glitterati were discovering Santa Fe as a charming place to buy a second home (drastically driving up real estate prices) and get away from the drudgery of Hollywood. A week almost never went by when my wife did not sell a hot dog or a churro to some movie star.One day she looked down the sidewalk in front of the art museum and, lo and behold, there was Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange walking hand-in-hand towards the vending cart. Being an actress, my wife considered Sam Shepard to be a living god. She had read all his plays and had acted in several productions of them. When he approached the vending cart and ordered a hot dog she was nervous but remained utterly cool. She was not about to act like some starry-eyed gushing fan. She did not acknowledge his celebrity and treated him like any other customer.Handing him his change she saw that he was looking at her thespian mask pin on her lapel which she just happened to be wearing that day. Realizing that she was an actress he looked her in the eyes and smiled. She smiled back and fixed his hot dog. Jessica did not order anything.After handing Sam his dog my wife looked at Jessica then she looked at Jessica’s belly. Jessica was about eight months pregnant at the time. Jessica then looked at my wife’s belly. She was about seven months pregnant at the time. I am not a woman so I cannot dutifully describe the silent communication that no doubt took place between the two pregnant women.Living in Santa Fe we started eating a lot more tortillas than we had before. Santa Fe is a tortilla town. People there will wrap just about anything with a tortilla.While every day in Santa Fe seemed like a day of celebration, one day I decided to make a huge pot of Czechoslovakian gulasch. It is a dish that actually tastes better leftover the next day. The next day happened to be my day off so I decided to walk downtown to visit my wife at the vending cart.But first I had lunch. I warmed up some gulasch but instead of pouring it into a bowl to eat I got the crazy idea of spooning it onto a tortilla and eating it like a burrito. It was fantastic! I decided to make another one and I wrapped it in aluminum foil and took it with me to the vending cart.The woman who owned the vending cart happened to be there when I arrived. While my wife was making hot dogs for people I talked with the woman for a few minutes then I handed her the burrito, telling her that it was something that I invented.She unwrapped it and took a bite then another bite, “Oh my God! This is incredibly delicious! Oh, it is just wonderful. Can you make more of these and bring them down to the cart for us to sell?”“Sure.”“What’s it called?”I smiled, “It’s a Czechoslovakian burrito.”So on that historic day on the historic Santa Fe plaza the Czechoslovakian Burrito was born. For the next six or seven weeks I spent every freaking spare minute I had off from work cooking. Our tiny apartment began permanently smelling of gulasch.Every day my wife would bring a bag of aluminum foil wrapped Czechoslovakian burritos to the hot dog and churro vending cart and every day they would sell out. Everyone loved them! They became the talk of the town.One day a man in a suit with a small cooler bought one and put it in the cooler which turned out to be filled with dry ice. Instead of eating it, he left with it in the cooler.When my wife told me about this I became convinced that the man in the suit was from some big national restaurant chain. He was surely going to send the Czechoslovakian Burrito to the corporate headquarters and test kitchen of that restaurant chain. Then he would come back to offer me a million dollars for the recipe. I started getting excited.Of course, that never happened. While everyone loved my culinary invention, no one with money inquired about my secret recipe. The big pay off never materialized. We did not get rich, in fact we barely made any money at all. I only used top quality ingredients and what little money we made was simply not worth the incredible amount of time I put into making those burritos.Finally, I got really, really sick and tired of cooking the same thing day in and day out. It became a relentless chore that made little money and left me zero time for writing. Our kitchen had been turned into a factory and I became a factory worker. It was a great experience but I finally put an end to it.And besides, my wife was about to plop out a baby at any minute. There were grander things on the horizon.But for almost two months the good people of Santa Fe, New Mexico were treated to several hundreds of Czechoslovakian Burritos; my unique gastronomical invention. But now the burritos are just a legend (at least in my mind). It is with great pride that I remember having invented something and having put it out there for the whole world. That’s a good feeling.It has been a lot of years since I have made my Czechoslovakian gulasch. I kind of burned out on it. But my secret recipe is still securely locked away in my noggin. (And it is still for sale for the right price.)Copyright by <a href="https://readmedium.com/white-feather-archive-index-c95167f7dbaf">White Feather</a>. All Rights Reserved.</article></body>

The Czechoslovakian Burrito

A culinary journey wrapped in a tortilla

Very, very few people know this but I happen to be the inventor of the Czechoslovakian Burrito. That’s right; me! I am not a professional chef nor am I a professional inventor. I never went to any culinary institute, in fact I have never taken a single cooking class in my entire life. I am not an expert, a cooking guru, nor a kitchen savant. I am just an ordinary human being.

Have you ever dreamed of inventing your own unique and original culinary dish? Well, if I can do it, so can you! And you don’t have to be an expert, be certified, or be Martha Stewart’s nephew. You can do it!

But I am here to tell you that it is not easy. It takes an incredible amount of failure, of indefatigable relentless perseverance, of clear vision, of intense desire, and a positive attitude that goes beyond critical thinking. It takes a few tablespoons of ignorance and several cups of luck. And it takes an adventurous spirit willing to go where no human has ever gone before.

It took me eleven long, tortuous years to invent the Czechoslovakian Burrito. The important point is that I never, ever gave up until it became a reality! I never gave in to those who called me an idiot. I never stopped believing in myself. I never gave up hope!

What’s that? You never heard of the Czechoslovakian Burrito? Seriously? Well, I see that I need to tell the whole story about how this incredible culinary sensation came to be….

It all started on the day I left home at the age of eighteen. I was hauling the last load of my stuff out to my car when my mother came outside and handed me a very thin stack of three by five index cards.

“What’s this?”

“I wrote down some recipes for some of your favorite meals that I have cooked for you over the years. You’re on your own now and you won’t have anyone to cook for you — at least not until you get married. So you’re gonna have to feed yourself and learn how to cook a little bit. You’ll go bankrupt eating out all the time.”

“Gee thanks, mom.” I folded the index cards in half and shoved them into the back pocket of my jeans. I gave her a light peck of a kiss on her cheek and turned to walk to my car. Hugging was not something our family did. In the driver’s seat of my car I turned to see her still standing in front of the house. I waved and then got the hell out of there.

I was barely a block away when the celebration began. I was clapping and yelling with joy. I made it! I finally got out of there! I escaped! I’m free!

I imagined my mother going back into the house and doing some celebrating of her own. The most troublesome one is finally gone! Two kids out of the house now! Only two more to go! Of course I have no idea what my mother really did when she got back in the house.

A few weeks later I was in my very own kitchen in the townhouse I was renting. I got out those index cards and unfolded them. And that is the moment when the long culinary journey of the Czechoslovakian Burrito began…

Oh, by the way, my mother was born in Czechoslovakia. That is a tidbit of information that I simply must not forget to mention so I am throwing it out there now. And there is other important information that also needs to be revealed in order to properly preface the story of my culinary invention.

First of all, I should point out that my mother was a Kitchen Nazi. I do not say that to be denigrating. It is just a statement of fact. The kitchen was her domain and she was the all-powerful dictator ruling it. Her kitchen was the cleanest kitchen in the entire world and to keep it that way it was best to keep humans — especially male humans — out of it.

Any knowledgeable germ knew not to ever come near my mother’s kitchen lest it meet with a horrible, violent and often toxic death. Every handle in the kitchen — the cabinet knobs, the refrigerator handle, the oven handle — as well as every metal surface was wiped down continuously throughout the day to make sure there were no fingerprints in the kitchen. Fingerprints, after all, contain germs.

Although males were not allowed in her kitchen, she made an exception to that rule when it came to washing and drying the dishes. My mother hated washing dishes so she relegated that chore to her ungrateful children. She wanted us to learn that there was no such thing as a free lunch. She also hated peeling potatoes so she made me do that. I must have peeled well over twenty thousand potatoes during my childhood. It was the only cooking experience I ever had.

The worst part of my childhood culinary experiences was the fact that we NEVER ate out. NEVER! Every single solitary meal that I ever ate up until the time I was fourteen years of age was cooked by my mother. With the money it took for the family to eat out, my mother could prepare twenty meals at home. And she was an expert at feeding a family of six on mere pennies. She never purchased anything unless it was on sale or unless she had coupons. She bought in bulk and she only bought the lowest quality foods.

Although my mother was born in Czechoslovakia she was neither Czech nor Slovak. She was actually German. She, her family, and a few hundred thousand other Germans living in Czechoslovakia were the excuse Adolf Hitler used to invade Czechoslovakia. My mother and her family celebrated when Hitler’s tanks panzered their way into the country.

Consequently, my mother cooked nothing but German food; the food she grew up with and the only food she knew how to cook. I did not eat Chinese food for the first time until I was seventeen years old. I was fifteen the first time I ate pizza. I had my first enchilada at sixteen. As I started gaining some freedom in my teenage years I discovered that there is a whole world of wonderful cuisines out there and I began resenting the fact that I had been shielded from it by my mother.

My mother believed that eating garlic created sexual craving. Therefore, to her, it was evil — and certainly not something to feed to children. She vehemently refused to allow garlic in her kitchen. I was eighteen years old when I first discovered that garlic even existed (and I’ve been eating it practically every single day ever since).

Looking over those index cards my mother had given me I decided to make gulasch. I brought the index card with me to the grocery store and bought all the necessary ingredients. It turned out fairly well and it tasted just like my mother’s gulasch.

But why eat what I had always eaten? Once I had my own kitchen domain I dived headlong into learning about cooking. I bought cookbooks and tried to make all the food that I never had growing up. I did a lot of research and experimenting. I wanted to have a repertoire of perfected dishes. I wanted to have dinner parties.

But I always eventually came back to that gulasch. I decided I wanted to make it better. My research showed me that my mother’s gulasch was not the same as any gulasch recipe out there. My mother’s gulasch was essentially a meat stew with cubed beef and pork with lots of onions. The primary spices used were paprika and ground caraway. Just before the stew was ready sour cream was added to make it creamy and yummy and it was served with potatoes.

The one thing missing from my mother’s recipe, which seemed to be included in every other recipe I came across, was garlic. So I added garlic to my mother’s recipe and it turned out way, way better!

Over the next ten years I continued experimenting and finally came up with my very own gulasch recipe that was so much better than my mother’s. While I perfected many other dishes, gulasch became the meal I would prepare for times of celebration.

It also became the go-to first meal that I would cook for a date. My dating regimen back then started out with a few typical dates — movies and eating out — and then finally the invitation to my place for a home-cooked meal. It was never far from the dining table to the bedroom. Often, the first time I slept with a woman I did so with a belly full of gulasch.

When asked what I was serving for dinner I started answering, ‘Czechoslovakian Gulasch.’ To answer simply with, ‘gulasch,’ was boring and certainly not very sexy. ‘Czechoslovakian Gulasch’ raised eyebrows. It almost sounded exotic. And it was something absolutely no one had ever heard of before, much less eaten before. While the naming of my signature dish was a half-assed way of honoring my mother, it was mostly an attempt to make myself out as an exciting, adventurous chef who knew what the hell he was talking about.

It worked.

At the age of twenty-eight, ten years after my mother gave me those index cards, I got married. The culinary expertise of the woman I married was very, very, very limited. She knew how to boil water and make toast. And that was it!

She was a bit embarrassed by that but I did not mind one bit. At that point in my life I was convinced that the way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach. I thrilled at doing all the cooking.

Oh my God! Did I become just like my mother?!

No, no, no! Absolutely not! Surely not! No way! Yeah, I became the master of my kitchen domain and I did all the cooking but we also ate out occasionally. Plus, I tried to cook as many different types of cuisine as I could (and I continued experimenting). I certainly did not want our daughter to be deprived of culinary diversity the way I was as a child. No, I was an improved version of my mother!

But I am getting ahead of myself…

It was near the end of our first year of marriage that my newlywed bride and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. For many years Santa Fe had been my favorite city in America. I had visited there every chance I got and I desperately wanted to move there. The feeling one feels being in Santa Fe is the closest one can get to the feeling of being in some foreign city while still being in America. It is an old, ancient city and there is so much diversity there! And culture. And art. And beauty!

Being newlyweds in love only added to the city’s charm.

I was a writer and my bride was an actress. But we desperately needed a roof over our head so I got a job at a bookstore and my wife got a job working at a hot dog and churro vending cart on the historic downtown plaza. My wife got the better job.

Can you imagine selling hot dogs and churros from a vending cart on the corner by the art museum in one of the most historic places in America? The woman who owned the cart and had hired my wife was a thoroughly delightful person with whom one could converse endlessly with. She trained my wife in everything one needed to know about running a vending cart and she explained all the intricacies of hot dogs and churros. My wife’s culinary expertise suddenly doubled.

One of the challenges of the job was keeping the pigeons away. One of the benefits was meeting a lot of celebrities. It was the Eighties and a lot of the Hollywood glitterati were discovering Santa Fe as a charming place to buy a second home (drastically driving up real estate prices) and get away from the drudgery of Hollywood. A week almost never went by when my wife did not sell a hot dog or a churro to some movie star.

One day she looked down the sidewalk in front of the art museum and, lo and behold, there was Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange walking hand-in-hand towards the vending cart. Being an actress, my wife considered Sam Shepard to be a living god. She had read all his plays and had acted in several productions of them. When he approached the vending cart and ordered a hot dog she was nervous but remained utterly cool. She was not about to act like some starry-eyed gushing fan. She did not acknowledge his celebrity and treated him like any other customer.

Handing him his change she saw that he was looking at her thespian mask pin on her lapel which she just happened to be wearing that day. Realizing that she was an actress he looked her in the eyes and smiled. She smiled back and fixed his hot dog. Jessica did not order anything.

After handing Sam his dog my wife looked at Jessica then she looked at Jessica’s belly. Jessica was about eight months pregnant at the time. Jessica then looked at my wife’s belly. She was about seven months pregnant at the time. I am not a woman so I cannot dutifully describe the silent communication that no doubt took place between the two pregnant women.

Living in Santa Fe we started eating a lot more tortillas than we had before. Santa Fe is a tortilla town. People there will wrap just about anything with a tortilla.

While every day in Santa Fe seemed like a day of celebration, one day I decided to make a huge pot of Czechoslovakian gulasch. It is a dish that actually tastes better leftover the next day. The next day happened to be my day off so I decided to walk downtown to visit my wife at the vending cart.

But first I had lunch. I warmed up some gulasch but instead of pouring it into a bowl to eat I got the crazy idea of spooning it onto a tortilla and eating it like a burrito. It was fantastic! I decided to make another one and I wrapped it in aluminum foil and took it with me to the vending cart.

The woman who owned the vending cart happened to be there when I arrived. While my wife was making hot dogs for people I talked with the woman for a few minutes then I handed her the burrito, telling her that it was something that I invented.

She unwrapped it and took a bite then another bite, “Oh my God! This is incredibly delicious! Oh, it is just wonderful. Can you make more of these and bring them down to the cart for us to sell?”

“Sure.”

“What’s it called?”

I smiled, “It’s a Czechoslovakian burrito.”

So on that historic day on the historic Santa Fe plaza the Czechoslovakian Burrito was born. For the next six or seven weeks I spent every freaking spare minute I had off from work cooking. Our tiny apartment began permanently smelling of gulasch.

Every day my wife would bring a bag of aluminum foil wrapped Czechoslovakian burritos to the hot dog and churro vending cart and every day they would sell out. Everyone loved them! They became the talk of the town.

One day a man in a suit with a small cooler bought one and put it in the cooler which turned out to be filled with dry ice. Instead of eating it, he left with it in the cooler.

When my wife told me about this I became convinced that the man in the suit was from some big national restaurant chain. He was surely going to send the Czechoslovakian Burrito to the corporate headquarters and test kitchen of that restaurant chain. Then he would come back to offer me a million dollars for the recipe. I started getting excited.

Of course, that never happened. While everyone loved my culinary invention, no one with money inquired about my secret recipe. The big pay off never materialized. We did not get rich, in fact we barely made any money at all. I only used top quality ingredients and what little money we made was simply not worth the incredible amount of time I put into making those burritos.

Finally, I got really, really sick and tired of cooking the same thing day in and day out. It became a relentless chore that made little money and left me zero time for writing. Our kitchen had been turned into a factory and I became a factory worker. It was a great experience but I finally put an end to it.

And besides, my wife was about to plop out a baby at any minute. There were grander things on the horizon.

But for almost two months the good people of Santa Fe, New Mexico were treated to several hundreds of Czechoslovakian Burritos; my unique gastronomical invention. But now the burritos are just a legend (at least in my mind). It is with great pride that I remember having invented something and having put it out there for the whole world. That’s a good feeling.

It has been a lot of years since I have made my Czechoslovakian gulasch. I kind of burned out on it. But my secret recipe is still securely locked away in my noggin. (And it is still for sale for the right price.)