Developing Tacos September 12, 2006 1 comment
It was a fifth or sixth grade science teacher who taught me the importance of labeling containers. I had brought in some kind of science liquid in a small mouthwash bottle, with no mention of the containers updated contents. As I presented him my mouthwash, his eyes grew wide at the excitement of the lesson teaching opportunity I had unexpectedly presented. He snatched the bottle and extended his arm high in the air to expose my idiocy.
“What’s wrong with this?” he asked, followed by the answer to his own question, “There’s No Label, of course!”. I get it, had I left that bottle of “mouthwash” somewhere, the results could have been interesting.
Last night I was making taco meat. While I do know the few ingredients required to transform regular ground beef into a mexican meat heaven, I do not do this often. I spiced up the meat, put it in a shell, added the standard taco condiments and ate my taco. It was hot as hell. I’ve had hot tacos and enjoy spicy foods, but this taco was on some new level. I retraced my steps with Susan, who was dumfounded by my inabilities.
It must be too much hot sauce. But no, this was a deeper heat than hot sauce… I used the Chili Powder that’s in the glass container with the purple lid. Chilli powder isn’t that spicy, you can get away with using tons of that.
“Wait, you said the glass container with the purple lid?”
“yes, the chilli powder”
“That’s cayenne pepper, not chili powder”. Mexican meat heaven it was not, colossal waste of perfectly good beef, it was.
I even smelled that spice before I spread it liberally throughout. The chili powder was in a different unlabeled container and I learned, is a much darker red.
I was pretty excited, this real world scenario had web design lesson all over it! It immediately became clear how easy it is for someone unfamiliar with there surroundings to make a mistake with disasterous results. It had snuck up in the taco meat completely unexpected. Here you’ve gone and spent all this time making something idiot proof and some noob comes along and throws cayenne pepper up in there. The difference is, in real life, I’ll make tacos again. On the web, I would have never given it a second chance.
haveboard #
I just almost spit my cereal at the monitor after reading that!