Burrito little donkey

"A burrito (IPA: /bəˈriːto/), or taco de harina, is a type of food found in Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine. It consists of a flour tortilla wrapped or folded around a filling. The flour tortilla is usually lightly grilled or steamed, to soften it and make it more pliable. In Mexico, refried beans, Mexican rice, or meat are usually the only fillings and the tortilla is smaller in size. In the United States, however, fillings generally include a combination of ingredients such as Mexican rice, beans, lettuce, salsa, meat, guacamole, cheese, and sour cream, and the size varies, with some burritos considerably larger than their Mexican counterparts.The word burrito literally means "little donkey" in Spanish, coming from burro, which means "donkey". The name burrito possibly derives from the appearance of a rolled up wheat tortilla, which vaguely resembles the ear of its namesake animal, or from bedrolls and packs that donkeys carried. It is similar to the taco.""Mexican popular tradition tells the story of a man named Juan Mendez who used to sell tacos in a street stand, using a donkey as a transport for himself and the food, during the Mexican Revolution period (1910-1921) in the Bella Vista neighborhood in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. To keep the food warm, Juan had the idea of wrapping the food placed in a large home made flour tortilla inside individual napkins. He had a lot of success, and consumers came from other places around the Mexican border looking for the "food of the Burrito,"

When we think of popular Mexican foods, burritos are usually at or near the top of the list. A self-contained meal of beans, rice, vegetables, and other ingredients, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t enjoy a burrito, at least on occasion. But how much do you know about this go-to Mexican lunch menu item?Burritos have an interesting and mysterious history, starting with their name.What does “burrito” mean?If you took Spanish in school, you might remember that the suffix –ito is what we call the diminutive. That means that when you put it at the end of a word, it becomes “little blank.” As an example, let’s break down the word “burrito.” In Spanish, burro means donkey, so burrito means “little donkey.” It’s an odd name for a food, we know, but there are a few stories that explain where the name comes from.Food on the GoThere are two stories that are similar but are supposed to have happened in different circumstances. In both versions of the story, travelers needed a way to carry their meals while on the road so they wrapped their food in tortillas. One version of the story attributes the idea to the people of Sonora as a group. The inhabitants of this state in northwestern Mexico were frequent travelers who carried their belongings on donkeys. Therefore, they took to calling their tortilla-wrapped meals “little donkeys” after their trusty pack animals.The second version of the story takes place during the Mexican Revolution. During the 1910s, a man named Juan Méndez was a street vendor in Chihuahua, Mexico. He needed a way to keep his food warm while he was traveling, so he wrapped it in a tortilla. He quickly discovered that wrapping his meal in a tortilla was not only a great way to transport his food on his donkey, but also to eat it! And, just like the Sonorans, he named it after his donkey.Lunch for the KidsThere is one last story that also involves a street vendor from Chihuahua, but this one dates from the 1940s. We don’t know this vendor’s name, but the story goes that he sold food near a school in Ciudad Juárez, the most populous city in Chihuahua. He wrapped food in tortillas to sell to the schoolchildren, whom he nicknamed burritos, which was slang for “slow” or “dimwitted.” We don’t know whether this was an affectionate nickname or if

Of Spanish burro, meaning "little donkey." Unfortunately, no one is sure exactly how the food got to be named after the pack animal. Some speculate that the connection may lie in the resemblance of a stuffed tortilla to the bedrolls and bundles often carried by the animal. It has also been suggested that a burrito looks a bit like a donkey's ear, but even if so, why use the donkey as an eponym for the food?As might be expected, there is a legend about the peculiar naming of a food after the donkey. During the time of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), supposedly there was a food vendor by the name of Juan Mendez who used a donkey to carry his food. To keep the food warm, he would wrap it up in flour tortillas. People looking for Mendez's tasty offerings would say that they were looking for the "burrito," or rather the donkey with the food.The legend certainly connects the donkey to the burrito, but the story lacks documented evidence. However the food got its name, a simple mix of meat, beans, and cheese has become a culinary phenomenon. The pretzel was most likely introduced into the United States during the 19th century by German immigrants. Its name is derived from German Brezel. The familiar knot-shaped pretzel has been around, at least in Germanic countries, for centuries, as is evidenced by its appearance in a painting of The Fight between Carnival and Lent by the 16th-century Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel, the Elder. The origins of the pretzel, however, are certainly a good deal earlier, for the Old High German form brezitella is closely related to Italian bracciatello, "ring-shaped bun." We may assume with some confidence, therefore, the existence of a common Medieval Latin source brachiatellum, from Latin brachiatus, "having branches like arms." Apparently the pretzel is so called because of the similarity between its knot shape and a pair of folded arms. Hash browns is short for hashed brown potatoes. The dish consists mainly of boiled potatoes that have been diced and then fried until browned. Hash and the cutting tool hatchet are first cousins: both words can be traced back to the French word for a battle-ax, hache. The English verb hash, meaning "to chop"—which is what you do to make hash browns—is based on the French verb hacher with the same meaning. English speakers have been hashing and eating food since the 17th century. Gnocchi are small dumplings made with potato or semolina. The name is the plural form of Italian gnocco, which can refer to a lump as well as a dumpling. That word came about as an alteration of nocchio, meaning "knot in wood," which may be related to a Germanic word akin to knuckle. All these etymological sources allude to the small, tight rounded shape of gnocchi, but they also denote hard objects, which belies the soft texture of these tasty morsels.POP QUIZ: Name That Pasta