It Rhymes With "The Taco"
On Sunday mornings, I take Eli 7.4 to breakfast at McDonald's.
He always orders the same thing--Pancake Happy Meal (for the toy), and then I order a Big Breakfast Platter to get him a biscuit and some scrambled egg. The pork sausage is thrown away as dangerously toxic, and based on the smell, I believe that assumption is correct. And we get a hash brown "racing oval," which I always eat.
I used to get a biscuit for myself as well, but as I saw him eat two or three bites of pancake for months on end, I decided that something needed to be done with those pancakes. I didn't blame him for wanting a toy--if they had adult Happy Meals, I'm sure I'd be all over it--but I wanted to waste less food.
"So how was breakfast?" Gloria asked when we got home, after Eli had run upstairs to find a book.
"Good," I said. "Eli had his regular meal, and I had a panaco."
"A what?" she asked.
"A panaco," I said. "It's a pancake in the shape of a taco shell, and inside is a hash brown cut in half lengthwise. A little syrup is poured on on the hash brown, too."
"That sounds good," she said.
"It is," I said. "The syrup really puts it over the top."
"How long has McDonald's had it on their menu?" she asked.
"Um," I said. "It's not exactly on their menu. It's something I made. I'm kind of a fast foodie."
"Oh, good grief!" she said. "You called it a "panaco," and I thought that was really its name."
"That IS its name," I said.
Just then, Eli came downstairs with his book. "How was breakfast?" Gloria asked him brightly.
"Good," he said. "I had a biscuit and egg, and Dad had a panaco."
"See?" I said.
Chopped, or Something
Eli loves a show on the Food Network called "Chopped." The format of the show is that three chefs make a dish from ingredients that are revealed to them at the start of the contest, and they have thirty minutes to make a dish. It's always completely frantic, and they're always finishing their dishes with seconds to go.
The trick, though, is that the ingredients are often pretty unusual. So they'll start out with something like "Chefs, your ingredients for this round are goat testicles, cotton candy, asparagus, and bubble wrap. You have thirty minutes."
I'm exaggerating, but not by much. Now, a sidebar.
We went out to dinner on Sunday, and Gloria said, "When did it become okay to wear baseball caps in restaurants?"
"I don't know," I said. "1975?"
"It doesn't look right," she said, and I started laughing.
I adopted the tone of the guy in the commercial who asks about posting videos to Facebook. "So, does anybody know when it was okay to start wearing caps in restaurants?"
Ah, hell, that's not funny when it's typed. It was good in the restaurant, though.
Sidebar over.
So we're on the way home, making fun of Chopped, and Eli says he can make a dish out of waffles, bacon, and cotton candy. "So you fold the waffle into a croissant..."
"Wait, how do you fold a waffle into a croissant?" Gloria asked.
"Is it a taco shape?" I asked.
"So that would make it more of... a waco", she said.
"So it's a panaco, but with a waffle," I said.
"Oh my God, you guys," Eli said, laughing. "Just shut up for a minute. So you take the waffle, put bacon inside it, put water on the cotton candy to melt it, then pour it on top."
"I would just skip the bacon," I said. "Just pour the cotton candy on top of the waffle."
"Yeah, your Dad would be done with twenty-nine minutes left," Gloria said.
The Tortada, in Tortuga
We were watching Sidney Crosby score about a point a minute against Ottowa when a commercial came on for a new Taco Bell product.
The tortada.
"I'm not sure what that is," I said. "I guess it's the combination of a tostada and, um, something."
"They are TOTALLY ripping off the panaco," Eli 8.8 said.
p.s. "tortada" actually means "tart" in Spanish. I'm not sure how chicken, lettuce, tomato, and bacon qualify as a tart, but that's what it means. Oh, and I also stumbled on this fantastic fast food website called
Grub Grade.
Oh, We Know What You're Doing
Cracker Barrel has a new product.
It's called the "pancake taco," and here's what it looks like:
Long-time sufferers of this blog will immediately recognize this promotional image. It is, in fact, a clear copy of the Panaco, created by Eli 7.4 and myself way back in 2008.
I texted him in Liberia to inform him that our intellectual property is under attack. I'm sure he has nothing better to do.
Another Culinary Masterpiece
From the innovator who brought you the Panaco (stolen by Taco Bell 10 years later), I bring you--the Fritorito!
Flour tortilla, buffalo chili (delicious, made by C), corn, avocado, and Fritos. Roll into a burrito and enjoy.
