The Great Taco Mystery of 2007

I am going to tell you something I have never told anyone. Ethan Baker was my first kiss. Well, I’ve changed his name so this is only a partial confession. But, in the summer of 2007, Ethan Baker was my very first kiss.

When people talk about the taste of summer I always say tacos. It’s an irrevocable response. It was what they served every day at the Viking Adventure Camp canteen for lunch and I tasted the strong blend of flavours on his hot breath that afternoon on the wooden jetty.

It was a small adventure camp on the edge of Loch Lomond in Scotland. They had us camping, hiking, ziplining, canoeing and rock wall climbing. It was 2 weeks in the fresh outdoors with the birds calling in the masses of green in the trees.

My parents had been hesitant to send me to a boys and girls mixed summer club but, after wobbling down from the zipline and marching red-faced into lunch, they had nothing to worry about.

The tacos were not what you'd expect. In the canteen, they had made the ingredients into a chunky paste which they would then scoop out of metal containers and pile into each crispy shell. The paste soaked into the shell and melted in your mouth which is not an adjective people associate with tacos. We waited in a line, shell in hand. It was the easiest way to mass-produce the tacos. It was the easiest way - not the best way.

It sounds quite odd but, they were the best tacos I have ever tasted. All the good things in life are like that - unexpected.

It was a mixture I had tried to recreate ever since. For a decade and a half, I have been balancing the ingredients found in those unfortunate tacos. Not because I wanted to kiss Ethan Baker again. When I think back on his overbearing mouth with lips wet from swimming in the lake, I don’t feel any lasting want for him. But, the taste held a moment for me that I had found difficult to capture on any other summer. Youth, perhaps? Ignorant bliss is more likely.

I had perfected each piece of this mysterious taco paste:

Ground beef

Guacamole

Chopped, grilled onions

Lettuce

Grated cheese - medium cheddar - is thrown on top of it.

Although I never blended it into a paste - I wouldn't do that to myself again. It was a standard taco recipe but, I found there was always an ingredient I had missed. Something was missing from that tingle on the tongue. Maybe that was just Ethan Baker. Or maybe it was sweat from the cook, Mrs Clarke, who flicked the paste off of the spoon into our shells each day.

One hot summer night I bolted upright in bed. Peanut butter.

It was undeniable.

What a strange ingredient for a taco. It was peanut butter mixed in with the ground beef.

But then, it made sense. It gave the taco a nutty, earthy flavour that persisted on the breath until half four in the afternoon. That was when Ethan Baker found me reading on the edge of the jetty and insisted I was boring for it. We teased each other for some time. He was what you called a 'cool kid'. Not too cool to have taco breath though.

But I am departing the confusing knowledge I have held onto for quite some time: peanut butter in beef tacos.

Tastes hold memories. Not necessarily of what happened or the people involved but of ourselves. It was a past version of myself on that jetty which I will never get back - quite frankly I never want back. But, everyone likes to remember versions of themselves every now and then. Bewildered, headstrong and just wishing for Ethan Baker, the first brave volunteer for the zipline, to kiss me.