danalwyn

So, in your bacon related news, it appears that there's been a positive glut of bacon, not to mention lobster, crab, and possibly steak in distant, landlocked Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (a country that is probably over a thousand miles from the nearest crab). This glut in meat is particularly striking given that Kyrgyzstan usually doesn't cut its pork into bacon-like strips (even though apparently they do belong to the tribe of somewhat-lax-on-the-diet Muslims).

At the same time at nearby Manas Air Base, one of the critical links in NATO's Northern Distribution Network, the network of military bases that provides supplies for forces in northern Afghanistan, officials report the theft of at least $40,000 in food over the past three months. These two facts about Kyrgyzstan are, of course, probably completely unrelated.

(Well, at least your defense tax dollars are going to make somebody happy)

Every day I try and learn something new; usually through perusing the internet. Today, I learned why I tend to be confused by Chipotle.

The problem comes from the answer to the question "What's in a carnitas burrito?". Of course I always knew that the answer was "Carnitas", which is sort of a "no, duh" kind of reaction. Everyone knows that a carnitas burrito (the standard by which any burrito joint should be judged) has carnitas in it. But this left me endlessly confused when I started eating burritos in other parts of the country.

"Hey," I would say, having bitten into it, "What's all this rice and beans and stuff doing in here? I didn't order that." Because a carnitas burrito is supposed to have carnitas in it; carnitas, some pico de gallo, some guac, and that's it. All this rice and beans stuff was foreign to me, and looked suspiciously like a way to pad out a burrito on the cheap.

Today I finally bothered to look this up on Wikipedia and found out my answer. Apparently, the burrito that Chipotle and others serve is a San Francisco (or Mission) style burrito, a foil-wrapped burrito loaded with a dozen different ingredients. Meanwhile I learned to eat burritos in San Diego, which has its own style related to that of Northern Mexico, where the main difference between a burrito and a sausage was consistency rather then content.

So that's what I learned today: the rest of the country is doing it wrong. That's what you get when you trust Mexican food that comes from San Francisco.