Cinco stuff

Alright, well, it's Cinco de Mayo today which may or may not mean lots of food choices, possibly Mexican food choices. So in an effort to keep you from gaining Cinco pounds or more, here's some choices of what to get and what to avoid, according to The Mag.

It's not just appropriate for today, of course, as this is just a good general overview of this type of food. So keep this in mind the next time you feel like some Mexican food and cruise by your neighbordhood Taco Bell.

Unless otherwise stated, the following choices are all at Taco Bell.

Healthiest Burrito

Fresco Fiesta Burrito – Chicken: 330 cal, 8g fat - 2.5g saturated fat - 1,240 mg sodium

AVOID: Griled Stuft Burrito—Steak; 680 cal, 30g fat - 10 g saturated fat, 1 g trans fat, 2,120 mg sodium

Healthiest Tacos

2 Fresco Grilled Steak Soft Tacos: 320 cal, 9g fat - 3 g sat fat - 1,100 mg sodium

AVOID: 2 DOUBLE DECKER Taco Supremes: 700 cal, 30g fat - 12 g saturated fat, 1,960 mg sodium

Healthiest Quesadilla

Steak Quesadilla: 520 cal, 28g fat - 13 g sat fat, 1 g trans fat - 1,300 mg sodium.

AVOID: On the Border's Fajita Quesadilla: 1,290 cal, 91g fat - 36 g sat fat, 2,260 mg sodium

Healthiest Nachos

Regular Nachos: 330 cal, 21g fat (3.5 g sat fat), 530 mg sodium

AVOID: Nachos BellGrande: 760 cal, 43g fat (8 g saturated fat, 3 g trans fats), 1,280 mg sodium.

Healthiest Mexican Kid’s Menu Order

On the Border's Kids Grilled Chicken with black beans and sautéed vegetables: 380 cal, 13 g fat (4 g saturated fat), 1,440 mg sodium.

AVOID: On the Border's Kids Chicken Crispy Taco Mexican Dinner with Mexican rice and salad with chipotle honey mustard dressing: 1,210 cal, 56 g fat (16 g saturated fat), 3,690 mg sodium.

Here's the entire list if you want to take a gander at the healthiest Mexican side dish for instance.

Oh, and just a quick thing on Cinco de Mayo... I used to think it was a big deal. Growing up, of course, there were always Cinco de Mayo festivities - not necessarily thrown by family or anything, but just festivals and parties in public and things like that.

Anyway, when I graduated high school in 93 (damn, that was a long time ago), I went to live in Mexico with some family, about 50 miles outside of Guadalajara. I'd been there before but never for more than a couple of weeks and never by myself.

So I tried to acclimate myself with the lifestyle and small-town Mexico. One of the things an uncle talked to me about that intrigued me were the fiestas. There were fiestas for everything, apparently: weddings and quinceñeras were abundnat of course but the small-town folk also partied for such things as their patron saint's day. Mexico is dominated by Catholicism, so every town has a patron saint. Some towns are named after saints, such as San Francisco, San Jose and the town I stayed in, San Simon. So their patron saint is on Oct. 28, for instance. The larger town nearby celebrated Oct. 4 as that's the say of San Francisco, that town's patron saint (the town is called Ixtlan de los Hervores).

Anyway, they partied heartily as there were eight days of celebration before the actual patron saint's day. So eight days before Oct. 28, you started to party. How can you not enjoy that?!?

So I wondered what it was like for Cinco de Mayo. Certainly they went all out for that, right?

I asked my uncle about that, and the conversation went something like this:

"What do you guys do for Cinco de Mayo?"

"For what?" he asked.

"Cinco de Mayo?"

"Um, nothing."

"What?!? You're kidding," I said, dumbfounded.

"No, we don't celebrate that. Why would we celebrate that?"

I told him about our celebrations up here for that and he was surprised. He said they might do something for it in Puebla but that's probably about it.

"September 16 is our big day."

See, Sept. 16 is Mexican Independence Day. May 5 is nothing. Okay, well, May 5 there was some victory that Mexican troops scored over a French army back in the 1800s, but in comparison to Sept. 16, it's nothing. Hence, the lack of nationwide celebrations.

Okay, thought I'd get you up to speed on Cinco de Mayo and what it means to Mexicans: not much.