El Taco Retro

We don't make a big deal of Cinco de Mayo but we usually like to honor our Mexican Americans in some small way and to thank them for their heritage of great chow. America would be sadly poorer without Mexican food.

So, when I awoke to find that Cinco de Mayo had sneaked up on me while I was celebrating a wedding, I decided to make margaritas and tacos. Not exactly authentic, but my heart was in the right place.

Sprinted down to my local market, which was bought a couple of years ago by an Hispanic family and has been transformed by them. I found all the makings for the kind of innocently joyous tacos we used to think were "Mexican food," and brought them home. Ground beef, tomatoes from Mexico where they are already ripe, pre-shredded cheese mixture, iceberg lettuce, limes, taco sauce in a bottle, pre-folded corn tortillas, margarita mix and tequila - in short, the whole enchilada.

Called our friends Janie and Jack for a spur-of-the-moment party. Janie has been working too hard, so she begged off in favor of napping on the couch but Jack came, bringing red and orange roses whose colors sang of warmer places.

I already had some nice, ripe avocados, so I made some guacamole as an appetizer, mixed up a large pitcher of margaritas and fluffed the chair cushions on the deck. We sat outside pretending to be in Mexico (until it got too chilly) and got a little tipsy drinking margaritas before sitting down to retro tacos.