Mazal tov to Goldy and Moshe on your 1st anniversary!
Mazal tov to Dovid Schwartz on becoming bar mitzvah this week!
Wishing Hinda Chana bat Sarah a refuah sheleima.
Mazal tov to Dovid Schwartz on becoming bar mitzvah this week!
Wishing Hinda Chana bat Sarah a refuah sheleima.
Here's a trivia question to break the ice at your Shabbat table:
Why are nachos called nachos?
I assume that most people reading this or hearing it read to them have eaten or even continue to eat nachos.
But I'm guessing that 1 in a 1,000 nachos-eaters has no clue why they are called nachos.
Before you go running to the OED, try seeing what kinds of answers you can get from the table.
Is nacho Spanish for melted cheese?
Or perhaps its a backwards Anglicized Spanish neologism based on the American, "munch", like "munchos"?
The answer is rather delicious.
In 1943, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya was working at Club Victoria in the border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico, when a group of American military wives from Eagle Pass, Texas came in, famished after a day of shopping. Anaya's was the maître d, but the cook was nowhere to be found. They asked him for "something different this time." They were regular customers and Nacho wanted to please them. Anaya ducked into the kitchen, looked around and found some fresh tortillas, chees and jalapeños.... It was a hit and became a regular on their menu, under the name Nacho's Especiales - Nacho's Special.
I suppose now that they've become rather ubiquitous, what most of us eat today are just nachos ordinariales. (The full history is somewhat longer and more interesting than the present summary.)
Nacho's Nacho's Especiales were so especiales and became so populares that the city of Piedras Negras established a 3-day Nacho's Festival every November on Nacho's yahrzeit.
Now, there probably isn't a corner of the USA where you couldn't find someone eating a plate of nachos. What a legacy.
But would the proper spelling for them be "Nacho's"?
(By the way, Iggy is also a nickname for Ignatio. Imagine that had been Mr. Anaya's nickname.)
Question for your table: If you could invent something to make people's lives better that will forever be called by your name, what would it be?
Speaking of creativity, our daughter Goldy in Jerusalem told me the other day the secret of how Israel is vaccinating so many people so fast.
Every time someone gets a shot, a small amount of the vaccine remains in the tube.
Rather than discard these, the Israeli nurses are collecting those leftovers. When they have enough leftovers to make a full dose, they find someone not on the A-list (typically a young person) and give them this "leftover" shot.
That's very resourceful of them.
But in my humble opinion, that's not their real secret.
They're real secret is that to a Jewish heart, every life is precious.
When you have that attitude, it's amazing how you can find ways to help people not only survive but thrive.
Shabbat Shalom
PS - Do you have an amazing nachos recipe? Please send it my way, and we'll run it through the Seinfeld test kitchen on Saturday night.
Enjoyed this Table Talk? Vote with your fingers! Like it, tweet it, forward it....Why are nachos called nachos?
I assume that most people reading this or hearing it read to them have eaten or even continue to eat nachos.
But I'm guessing that 1 in a 1,000 nachos-eaters has no clue why they are called nachos.
Before you go running to the OED, try seeing what kinds of answers you can get from the table.
Is nacho Spanish for melted cheese?
Or perhaps its a backwards Anglicized Spanish neologism based on the American, "munch", like "munchos"?
The answer is rather delicious.
In 1943, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya was working at Club Victoria in the border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico, when a group of American military wives from Eagle Pass, Texas came in, famished after a day of shopping. Anaya's was the maître d, but the cook was nowhere to be found. They asked him for "something different this time." They were regular customers and Nacho wanted to please them. Anaya ducked into the kitchen, looked around and found some fresh tortillas, chees and jalapeños.... It was a hit and became a regular on their menu, under the name Nacho's Especiales - Nacho's Special.
I suppose now that they've become rather ubiquitous, what most of us eat today are just nachos ordinariales. (The full history is somewhat longer and more interesting than the present summary.)
Nacho's Nacho's Especiales were so especiales and became so populares that the city of Piedras Negras established a 3-day Nacho's Festival every November on Nacho's yahrzeit.
Now, there probably isn't a corner of the USA where you couldn't find someone eating a plate of nachos. What a legacy.
But would the proper spelling for them be "Nacho's"?
(By the way, Iggy is also a nickname for Ignatio. Imagine that had been Mr. Anaya's nickname.)
Question for your table: If you could invent something to make people's lives better that will forever be called by your name, what would it be?
Speaking of creativity, our daughter Goldy in Jerusalem told me the other day the secret of how Israel is vaccinating so many people so fast.
Every time someone gets a shot, a small amount of the vaccine remains in the tube.
Rather than discard these, the Israeli nurses are collecting those leftovers. When they have enough leftovers to make a full dose, they find someone not on the A-list (typically a young person) and give them this "leftover" shot.
That's very resourceful of them.
But in my humble opinion, that's not their real secret.
They're real secret is that to a Jewish heart, every life is precious.
When you have that attitude, it's amazing how you can find ways to help people not only survive but thrive.
Shabbat Shalom
PS - Do you have an amazing nachos recipe? Please send it my way, and we'll run it through the Seinfeld test kitchen on Saturday night.
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1 comment:
Although, weirdly -- since it has nothing to do with the food's name -- the way to give cheese that consistency is by adding sodium citrate, which has the chemical formula Na₃C₆H₅O₇.
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