Chili, Cheese, and Childhood

Today, I would like to share a recipe that was very very important to me as a child: Chili Cheese Burritos.

Chili Cheese Burritos are one of those foods that hold a special place in my heart, and maintain a connection to my childhood, and my Midwestern heritage both. 

I grew up in a small rural town in the heartland of Ohio, which everyone knows is the heart of America, so I guess like maybe in the 2nd ventricle of America. It was called Xenia. Pronounced Zee-nya. You could stretch it out, pronounce that “I” in the center there, but then we’d know that you watched the wrong local news channel, because Jamie Simpson wouldn’t be caught DEAD pronouncing it that way.

Xenia was a big bicycle city. There were bicycle repair shops, bicycle paths going through town, the water tower had a picture of a bicycle on it, and the library even had a couple books about bicycles on the shelves.

Oh? What’s that? Your library has books on bicycles too? Nobody asked. Write your own damn recipe blog, you attention whore.

I would really work up an appetite in Xenia on a summer afternoon. Not from bicycling, I didn’t really care for it. I was more into roller blading. You couldn’t get good roller blades in Xenia though. It was like a Capulets and Montagues thing there, bicycles and roller blades. That is a Shakespeare reference. You probably wouldn’t know that if you lived in Xenia either. Not because the education system is drastically underfunded (it is) or because the curriculum is constantly being cut for political reasons (it is), but because the library didn’t have room for both Shakespeare AND bicycles, and this is Xenia so the bicycles will not be going anywhere.

Anyways, after a hot summer afternoon spent furiously rollerblading away from all the angry bicyclists through the poorly paved, pothole ridden Xenia streets, I would be famished. And while cleaning up all the cuts and scrapes from both the angry bicyclists and poor city infrastructure management in equal part, my mother would know exactly what to put on the table to fill my belly and my soul, and eventually, the toilet. A plate of Chili Cheese burritos, soft and pillowy, steam rising through the air. The first luscious bite finds your mouth fIlled with delicious, melty cheese and chili. The second bite also has chili, but far less cheese because wrapping a burrito is a complex and geometrically challenging procedure and properly distributing the contents inside is a fool’s errand. This was always the perfect ending to a day that was both physically and psychologically traumatizing, and would be sure to result in ample time to rest and reflect on the strange obsession my town had with bicycles while I was seated comfortably on my toilet, testing the structural limitations of both porcelain, and human intestines.

Here's the recipe!

Go to Taco Bell and order Chili Cheese burritos. They’re back on the menu. Just do it. Go order them. If they take them off the menu again, I might lose what humanity I have left. Don’t do that to me. Go. Order some chili cheese burritos tonight.