Ode to El Imperial Mexican restaurant

Last night Nick and I went to a Mexican restaurant about 7 blocks from our apartment. It's not by any stretch of the imagination the best Mexican food in Houston, but it's decent, really cheap, has great margaritas and it's close to the house. We end up there a couple of times a month either because I'm to damn tired to cook dinner, haven't gone grocery shopping, or tried a new recipe that sounded good, but tasted like week old armadillo ass.

We found this place after Nick set dinner on fire one night. No, seriously. He didn't burn it, he actually set it on fire.

We were in our first apartment, and I was just getting used to this whole cooking for myself thing. While I'm a damn good cook now, it took a little practice to get that way. The first year in that apartment, my cooking was pretty much one big experiment until I finally figured out what in the hell I was doing.

I was cooking chicken tenders, corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, one of the three recipes I never screwed up. The corn was in the mircrowave, the potatoes mashed and warming in the oven and I was frying up the chicken tenders. I had the chicken in a pan on one of the burners and a plate with some paper towels on it on the burner next to it, but please make note of the fact that the burner with the plate and paper towels was NOT ON. This becomes very important later.

I asked Nick if he could heat up the gravy and he was more than happy to do so. He got out a pan, put it on one of the back burners, dumped the gravy in and turned on the burner. Only problem was, he turned on the wrong damn burner.

I'm happily frying up chicken tenders, taking them out of the pan and placing them on the plate next to me to drain, completely oblivious to the fact that Nick turned on the burner that was under the plate. I go over to the microwave to see if the corn was done when I hear a loud craaack and turn around in time to see the plate explode and the grease soaked paper towels catch on fire!

Rather than attempt to put out the fire, I did what any 19 year old who doesn't know how to cook would do. I pointed at the fire and screamed. Nick was in the living room and came running into the kitchen. He took one look at the (now larger) flames and said "What the hell happened?". My response? I pointed at the fire and screamed again. Yes, I know...very helpful.

Nick manages to knock the broken plate and still flaming paper towels onto the cheap linoleum flooring and stomp up and down on it. Did I mention that the linoleum was really cheap? Well, this shit was so cheap that the searing hot plate melted to the floor.

By this time, Nick is laughing hysterically and I am less than amused. I asked him why he set my dinner on fire and then jumped up and down on it and he looked at me like I had grown another head and said that he did not do it on purpose. Now, either I had PMS, was temporarily psychotic or just a melodramatic 19 year old, but this answer was unacceptable to me and I started to cry.

Yes... I'm standing in the kitchen with the smoke detector going off, a plate melted to the floor and extremely crispy chicken that my then boyfriend had just spent a good two minutes jumping up and down on, crying like an idiot. My mom chooses this exact moment to call and say "hi" and check in to see how I'm doing. The conversation went something like this:

Me: (sniffle) Hello?

Mom: (a little confused as to why her daughter is crying) Hi honey, is everything okay?

Me: Everything is most certainly not okay (sob)!! I was cooking dinner (sob) and Nick set it on fire (sob) and then he jumped up and down on it (sob, sob) and now the plate is melted to the floor (hysterical sobbing).

Mom: (trying not to laugh her ass off) Sweetie, put Nick on the phone, please.

Me: (sending death rays via my eyeballs towards Nick) You are sooooo in trouble now! My mom wants to talk to you.

I throw the phone at Nick and stomp off into the bedroom where I lay on the bed and silently vow that I will NEVER cook dinner for him again if that is how he's going to treat my efforts. No, wait...I'll cook dinner, but it will only be things that he really, really hates like tofu and asparagus and green beans.

I have no idea to this day what my mom said to him. I expect it was something along the lines of: "Don't worry, she's crazy. You knew this when you moved in with her. Stay very far away from her for half an hour and for the love of all that is holy CLEAN THE DAMN KITCHEN before she sees it and has another freaky meltdown".

Nick, in his infinite wisdom, took mom's advise and did exactly that. About half an hour later he comes in the bedroom and offers to take me out for Mexican food. Now, we're young and this is our first apartment and we both are working crappy retail jobs. We had no damn money whatsoever, so we ended up at the very cheap El Imperial Mexican restaurant because there was a two for one dinner coupon on the back of a Kroger's receipt.

We've been going there for 10 years now. I have never once ordered chicken there.

And yes...Nick is indeed a saint for putting up with my craziness for this long.