“I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing”

At times I wonder why it is I continue writing, be it for this blog, the one I contribute to at http://community.retirement-online.com/profile/IrwinLengel or my monthly column for our community newsletter. But no sooner does the question pop up in my mind, it disappears almost immediately once I turn on my computer and start thinking of wild and crazy things to write about.

Yup, to steal a line from Steve Martin – I am one wild and crazy guy. With that thought in mind I decided that I would try to write a post this week using a one-liner from a past tv show or in this instance an advertisement from one of those shows.  The hard part is going to be to try and work the one-liner into the blog so that it seems to be part of the post. But here goes:

For instance, for lunch today we had home-made Chimichangas.

Now, for those of you who have had this Mexican Spanish dish, you know that in some restaurants they are moderate in size while in others they might be rather substantial. Well, with ours being home-made and a way to use up some of our fresh vegetables, suffice it to say ours are pretty substantial. But before I go much further allow me to give a brief summation of the history of the Chimichanga.

As a matter of information and thanks to Wikipedia – the words chimi and changa come from two Mexican Spanish terms: chamuscado, (past participle of the verb chamuscar) which means seared or singed, and change, related to chinga, (third-person present tense form of the vulgar verb chingar), a rude expression for the unexpected or a small insult.

Enough with the Mexican Spanish lesson, let’s get on with one of several stories about how this Mexican Spanish dish came about. According to Wikipedia and one of its sources, the founder of the Tucson, Arizona, restaurant El Charro, Monica Flin, accidentally dropped a burrito into the deep-fat fryer in 1922. She immediately began to utter a Spanish profanity beginning “chi…” (chingada), but quickly stopped herself and instead exclaimed chimichanga, a Spanish equivalent of “thingamajig.” We will leave it there by saying and the rest is history.

Upon devouring our huge chimichanga for lunch, when finishing the last bite, I looked at my wife and coyly said: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” For those of you too young to remember this saying it is from an old Alka Seltzer advertisement. When someone overate, and was full of gas and/or bloated, they would reach for the Alka Seltzer bottle and prior to popping two alka seltzer tablets into a glass of water would say: I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”  Hope you enjoyed my craziness.