Despite what the movies tell us, the frontier settler was not tilting a Stetson hat and singing 'home, home on the range.'   The adventurous settler was dealing with many hardships, and a perilous existence. Life was hard, cooking was even harder, and there was no local "takeout."  But when it was time to rustle up some grub, the settler was in luck, and luck generally had a Spanish accent.

When the Spanish conquered Mexico, they brought animals with them.  The pig was self-fattening, easy to transport and easy to raise. The indigenous people in the Mexican interior took the grunting, rotund porker to their hearts.  Cattle were more demanding and needed space and grasses to eat. They found their happiest home in northern Mexico and those lands further north that became Texas. Wheat also grew in these areas and would replace cornmeal as the basis for tortillas.  

Mexico gifted the area with chiles to fire up food; beef was on the hoof; wheat waved across the plains.  What evolved?  Tex-Mex.

When the incantation Tex-Mex is spoken, visions appear - visions of burritos and chimichangas, of nachos and tacos, of enchiladas and fajitas.  When repeated three times - "Tex-Mex, Tex-Mex, Tex-Mex", the faithful diner may even imagine a Mariachi band playing in the background.

Once again we turned to our friend Terry Thompson-Anderson.  Once again, she had definitive answers for us:

"Basically "Tex-Mex" is the combining of the two cultures, Mexican and Texan, in every aspect - food, literature, music and food. It's kind of like the Cajuns in South Louisiana. They were French first, then adapted to their new digs, borrowing from the Indians who were native to the region, from the Spanish and the Europeans flocking into New Orleans. Bouillabaisse became gumbo. Coq au Vin became Chicken Fricassee. The Mexicans were originally Indians, then the Spanish took over Mexico and those cultures merged. When the Mexicans moved further north into Texas, the culture merged with the pioneer Texan's cultures. The result was the whole aura of "Tex-Mex."   Watch modern Tex-Mex "conjunto" dancing. Looks a lot like two-stepping in a circle, or waltzing side by side in a circle, but you won't see anything like that in Mexico and you won't find a Chimichanga in Mexico or a taco as we know it in the U.S. But the Mexican-spanish roots are there in all those dishes - the culture shows through no matter how many layers of cheddar cheese we might heap on top of it!  Tex-Mex, then, is a food that evolved from the Spanish people living in Texas, the Mexicans who migrated northward who adapted their style of cookin to the foods they found here.

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