Summer Dinner Treat - Tacos de Muerte

The other night saw us, after a swirl of hectic events on a Wednesday evening, finally sitting down to dinner at 9 p.m. The late hour made it seem like we were living in Spain or something, except that instead of being European, we were simply crabby American parents and hungry, over-tired kids. Dinner was simple, hard-shelled beef tacos with fixings; no sides. After assembling my first taco, I spooned a bit of Paul Newman’s salsa onto it and took a bite. Almost immediately, I was pounding the table with a mouth on fire. Four heads turned quizzically towards me: “what the heck has gotten into Dad??” Through the tears in my eyes, I gasped out “This has got some kick.” I checked the label of the salsa – which claimed it was “medium.” Tired wife gently mocked me for overreacting as she finished assembling tacos for the kids. Everyone turned their attention to their own plates and commenced eating – no salsa. Thirty seconds later, chaos reigned. Hayden sat in his seat, unable to do anything other than repeatedly yell that his lips were burning. Cooper, reduced to inconsolable tears, wandered the dining room holding his tongue in his hand, unable to stop either the crying or the tongue-holding long enough to drink some soothing water or milk. Deanna and I were doing our best to lessen the wildfires burning in our own mouths while simultaneously trying to figure out what was going on and to get the kids to drink something. While I tended to the wounded, Deanna returned from the kitchen with the culprit. She had dumped what she thought was a can full of crushed tomatoes into the meat during cooking. It was actually a can of tomatoes that was spiked with jalapenos and habaneros and, frankly, tasted more like a can of jalapenos and habaneros spiked with a bit of tomato. You would think that the picture of a couple of tomatoes resting in a nest of hot peppers on the can, along with the helpful and prominently placed bilingual warnings on the front of the can that said “hot” and “picante” would have been a clue. But like I said, it was late and we were all tired. Once order was restored and I knew what I was dealing with, I actually enjoyed the challenge of powering through the meal, only occasionally being reduced to pounding the table or interrupted by Cooper’s gentle sobs. But those initial minutes when nobody knew why the hell our food was setting fire to our mouths certainly made it one of our more memorable meals.