Things it may never have occurred to you to wonder

[womzilla]

"Nacho" is a nickname for "Ignacio" (a form of the Latin name Ignatius). The dish we now call "nachos" was the creation of a Mexican chef named Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya in 1943, who called it "Nacho's Specialty".

I know that I had wondered for years but never when I was actually in front of a computer. So now I know, and now you know, too, unless you knew already, or if you've already forgotten, in which case, what were we talking about?

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I had been eating at Mexican restaurants, in a region noted for them, in an area that had once been part of Mexico, for over a decade. But I had never heard of nachos until I found them at a cheap place in Seattle, not then known for its Mexican food, in 1980.

Same thing with fajitas. Once, there was no such thing as fajitas. Then, not only were there fajitas, there had always been fajitas.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

If you're wondering if these things were really Mexican food, I think they really were. I also did not know them growing up in a place that had once been part of Mexico.

I first learned of fajitas -- I can tell you the month and year, because I had them with a woman who had been in my childbirth preparation class, and our children were five months old (this makes it September of 1979). She was a Central Valley girl, married to a Mexican man who later worked in the same small leather-goods factory as me. She said her mother-in-law taught her to make them.

What I think, after gazing into my capacious navel, is that fajitas are probably more common in Michoacan, which is where most of the Mexicans in my area are from, and that before that, more Mexicans in the US were probably from other places. Like more and more Mexicans in the US are from Oaxaca (probably not coincidental with the fact that there's a civil war going on there).

Until about that time, "nachos" was something in my vintage-forties Mexican cookbook ("Elena's"), as something to do with leftover tortillas when you came home late at night hungry and somewhat drunk. But I had never had a name for a quesadilla either: there was no name for it, you just ate it. A guy from Southern California said he ate them all the time instead of more expensive and nourishing food, and that's how I learned the name for it.

My point, and I do have one, is that I had an onion on my belt.