The Most Delicious Meal: Sheepherder’s Style

I love easy answers.

I was just a boy. I was maybe 8 years old and my dad was working for my Uncle Armando. I’d been with him out at the sheep camps and it was late. The weather had turned and there was an ice cold north wind. A few occasional flakes of snow had skittered past.

We’d had sandwiches and chips for lunch, worked hard, and I was famished.

We were looking at an hour drive back home and supper. It was already dark out.

He had to stop and talk to the sheepherder and we went into his bunk house. The room was small and lite by a kerosene lamp. There was a small wood stove for cooking and to provide heat. The warmth of it wrapped itself around my cold body like a blanket.

But that’s not what caught my attention. The old Sheepherder had fixed himself some supper. Fried potatoes with onion to flavor it. And he’d made red chili using hamburger meat. The chili and garlic used in making it swirled around the bunkhouse is a mouthwatering storm.

As he and my father spoke in Spanish, I looked at the stove and drooled with hunger.

The Sheepherder picked up on that. “Tienes hambre?” he asked. I didn’t know much Spanish but I knew the word “hambre.” He was asking if I was hungry.

“Si,” I replied.

He took a homemade tortilla from under a cloth towel. The tortilla was still warm from his making it.

He folded the tortilla a little, spooned in a generous helping of potatoes. He and then added a couple of spoonfuls of red Chili onto the potatoes. Folding it, he handed it over to me.

Hungrily, I are it. The spices made me just want to eat more. The warmth of the food flowed through me, filling my belly and expelling the chill I’d felt.

“What is this?” I asked my dad. I’d never tasted anything like this.

To young and having been raised in the sticks, I had no concept of a burrito.

“It’s called Sheepherder Style,” he said.

I have to be very careful of eating potatoes these days. Every once in a while, I like some fried potatoes with onion, and red Chile made by my beautiful wife. I fold it into a tortilla and enjoy.

And it still feels like a warm blanket around me.

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