BUZZURRO

A few weeks ago I had this conversation at school with a person born and raised in New Mexico,
Her: “The school cafeteria is serving frito pies for lunch.They are SO good!”
Other people nearby: “Frito pies. Great.”, “They are tasty.”, “Wonderful News’.
Me : thinking that fritto in Italian means fried, and frito in Spanish means fried, so she must be talking about a fried pie of some sort and also thinking ‘with all these recommendations, they must be good’
I actually say’I love Mexican food, so I’ll try one.”
Her “You can get one with beef or a vegetarian one with beans.”
Me “Either sounds good to me.”

So I went off to the school cafeteria where I found some cafeteria workers in front of trays with unappetizing blobs of food on them, covered in cheese.
‘That doesn’t look fried to me’ I thought, but I bravely ordered one anyway, wondering if what I ordered was the same as what I was expecting to eat.
The worker heaped on a pile of shredded lettuce and tomatos and I took my concoction… I mean frito pie to the lounge to dine in peace.
Even though the evidence on the tray pointed to the contrary, I still held firm to my belief that I was holding a tray of pie frito. A fried pie.
Fritto in Italian means fried and so does frito in Spanish. What I didn’t even think of was what a frito, the noun, was in English. It is a fried snack made with cornflour and tons of salt. I never really liked them as a child, and still don’t.
I dug my fork into the pile sitting on the tray and to my horror discovered a few of these noun fritos on the bottom. The pie wasn’t frito at all! It was just beef, cheese, tomato and lettuce thrown on a bed of those Frito snack chips which I do not like.
Being very hungry I tried to eat it anyway, hoping that the grease from the beef would cover the salty, fried, processed chemical taste that I associate with Fritos. It didn’t work.
I made it through a few bites and then threw the whole tray away.

Yesterday I went to a party at her house.
“I made frito pies” she proudly exclaimed.
My first reaction was to say ‘Yuck. No thanks’ but then I thought to myself that the last time I ate a frito pie was in the school cafeteria, a place not known for high cuisine, so I actually said “Sounds great. I’ll take one’
And she served me the same shapeless blob that the cafeteria did. The meat and beans were much better, so were the lettuce, tomato, onion and cheese, but the Fritos were the same.
I really can’t understand all the hype around frito pies.
At least now I know not to order them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Daily Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.