5 MAY 09: Cash In Your Chips?

A happy Cinco de Mayo to you. I couldn't believe my ears Monday evening, when the party seemed to start early in my neighborhood. But after a moment, I realized what was happening. Michael Baesden's radio show was playing a token merengue tune, while talking about Hispanic people.

It's probably not a happy Cinco de Mayo this year for the Hispanic community of Columbus. After all, Fiesta Columbus was cancel - oops, not rescheduled. Federal agents raided Ritmo Latino Nightclub and shut it down. And if that's not enough, Cinco de Mayo misses Margarita night at El Vaquero by a day.

When you go to a Mexican restaurant, exactly what are you eating? I'm talking about more than the dishes with strange-sounding names for lifelong U.S. residents -- and some of us still are trying to figure out how Taco Bell's "gordita" has less fat than a chalupa.

Many Mexican restaurants whet your appetite for dinner by putting chips and salsa at your table. But I was surprised to hear a man warn last year the chips at those restaurants "are fried in lard." This was a speaker at a religious conference, where people follow Biblical rules of "clean" and "unclean" meats. Those same people quietly are saying "I told you so" about the swine flu outbreak.

This statement about salsa chips was stunning to me - but it also left me skeptical. Tortilla chips sold in supermarkets don't list lard among the ingredients, and some of the bags claim to be "authentic." Well, not quite authentic enough to also list the ingredients in Spanish....

So was this conference speaker right? Is it lard that makes the chips at Mexican restaurants so appealing? Or is it the seeming lack of salt on the chips, which makes people with high blood pressure obsessed to have more?

Since it's "5/5" on the calendar, we contacted five Columbus area Mexican restaurants and asked about their chips. We quickly found this conference speaker didn't quite have his facts straight -- at least not around here. Of course, around here some people might save the lard for collard greens.

Our search for answers actually started a couple of months ago, when we dined at La Margarita in The Landings shopping center. We asked a server, who assured us the salsa chips were cooked in vegetable oil. We knew better than to ask about the refried beans....

The other "chip calls" (pardon the poker pun) were made Monday, with mostly similar results:

+ El Carrizo on Macon Road uses vegetable oil. Since "carrizo" means reed grass, I should have asked if they grow their own oil supply.

+ El Vaquero on the 280 Bypass in Phenix City uses vegetable oil. I assume this is true for all the other locations - since if anything, you might think the management would "fatten things up" for Alabama customers.

+ Vallarta on Veterans Parkway uses vegetable oil. They have to stay as mellow as Mellow Mushroom Pizza next door, you know.

+ Los Amigos on Whitesville Road was the lone exception. Asked if animal fat or vegetable oil is used, a man admitted: "We use both" - so not only convenience stores are watching the price of oil.

So in four out of five cases, lard is NOT used in salsa chips at area Mexican restaurants. The fifth one may depend on the best wholesale value - or perhaps the last medical checkup of the chef.

We should note the speaker who made the claim about lard in salsa chips lives in central Texas. The cooking rules could be different there than here. If there's 100-percent opposite thinking about barbecue beef and pork, that's certainly possible....

By the way, today also happens to be "Proclamation Day" at Columbus Council. The agenda includes special days to honor the Carver High School JROTC and the Toastmasters - but nothing to mark Cinco de Mayo. After the city's failure to mark Cesar Chavez Day in late March, Mimi Woodson may be daring some Mexican restaurant manager to run against her in the next election.

Now let's "sink-o" our teeth into the Monday news headlines:

+ Aflac held its annual shareholders meeting. Chairman Dan Amos noted the company's stock has rebounded from a big drop in January - so please stop comparing Aflac stock to that crash Carl Edwards had at Talladega.

+ WRBL reported Columbus city officials held a "Joint Information Center" meeting to prepare a possible response to swine flu. The meeting included the police and fire departments - to which I have to ask: why? Is someone expecting a stampede of scared patients out of St. Francis Hospital?

(Before some of you become confused - no, the Joint Information Center is NOT the new home building of the Metro Narcotics Task Force.)

+ Meanwhile, a court hearing relating to swine flu was held in Elmore County, Alabama. Some parents want the right to withdraw their children from schools for the rest of the school year, as a precaution. This could give new meaning to "accelerated classes."

+ Wacoochee Junior High School in Lee County reopened for students, nine weeks after a tornado. One teacher told WRBL the classrooms "look brighter now." That's what sunlight through holes in the roof can do....

+ Our Burkard Bulk Mail Index pulled back above the 500 mark, after falling below it Sunday. Either Yahoo's spam filters are getting better, or attractive women simply aren't setting up bedroom web-cams the way they once did.

The number of unique visitors to our blog is up more than 14 percent so far this year! To advertise to them, offer a story tip, make a PayPal donation or comment on this blog, write me - but be warned, I may post your e-mail comment and offer a reply.

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