We took a long weekend and flew to Tucson, AZ for the wedding of some friends. I have spent such limited time in the Southwest that I didn't even realize that we were only 70 miles from the Mexican border. However, I did understand that the Mexican food in Tucson was supposed to be good, so I looked forward to having some.
It didn't happen. What happened (outside of the wedding, which was lovely) is that we had a LOT of mediocre meals. Strip-mall, chain-restaurant type meals. Expensive. Bland. Bleah. It almost felt like we had never left the airport food court.
The only saving grace was when we went to the Farmers Market in the shopping plaza of the hotel we were staying. I sampled some good salsas and chips, browsed some succulent jerky, ogled some empanadas. And thank god, we found some tamales.
The guy was closing up shop, but opened up one of his coolers and brought out what he had. We bought 4 and warmed them up in our in-room microwave, and they came out great.
The first one I had was the Thanksgiving Tamale, which I loved. At first it seemed weird to have cranberries in a tamale, but it all worked really well together, like mixing turkey, cranberry sauce, and cornbread.
The second one I had was called the Jojo: Chipotle Beef, Jalapeno, and Cheese. Spicy! And very tasty.
Another thing that I very much enjoyed during my stay, which went very well with the tamales:
Yep, that would be life in the Wild West for me. Street food and beer.
