Mama is doin' the HAPPY DANCE!

I loves me some Mexican food. My first husband (Have I mentioned that there was a The Hubs, version 1? Trust me - we were infants!) was from southen California and his family really got me hooked on homemade Mexican food. We cooked a Mexican meal for dinner a couple of times a week, and tacos once a week. We even fried our own tortillas.

At that time, it was hard to find many of our favorite brands or spices, so when the grandparents of The Hubs vs. 1 came to visit us in Oregon, they brought us care packages of our favorite sauces, and even brought us tortillas as they were hard to find in Oregon. It was a great day in our household when we finally started finding our favorite products on the store shelves in Oregon. (That was the late 70's, early 80's. Now, it's very common place.)

In 1993 I moved to New England to marry The Hubs vs. 2. (yes, there was a divorce in between husbands. And four years of dating a very sexy Navy guy! Pardon me, I need to take a little mind vacation.) .................. (ok...I'm back)

Where was I...yes...1993, moved to New England...and guess what? No Mexican products on store shelves. Not even any Mexican restaurants! Cuban, yes. Puerto Rican, definitely. Brazillian, affirmative. But Mexican? The only Mexican restaurant I could find was in another state! (Fortunately the states are small back here) I would make The Hubs vs. 2 drive me from our home in Massachusetts to this restaurant in New Hampshire. Sometimes we'd get there and it would be closed. Or it wouldn't open for another two hours. Or the owners had gone to Florida for January.

When I went home to Oregon for visits I would buy my favorite taco sauce, carefully wrap it up, and bring it back in my suitcase. Any visitors from out west were required to do the same - bring me my sauce! (This was obviously before every item in suitcases had to be picked up and inspected by Security).

In 1997, when we got the internet at home, I started ordering my favorite sauce online and had it shipped to me. Which was a pain. Until fairly recently, the shipping costs were as much as the product (heavy glass bottles needing special packing). I did this right up through July of this year.

One time I was actually able to find my taco sauce in a grocery store, but it was a fluke. They never carried it again. My daughter looked at my face when I realized it wasn't on the grocery shelf the next time I shopped, and said, "Mom, you look like you're gonna CRY!"

Perhaps you underestand my jubilation when last week, while shopping at a major New England grocery chain I was able to find my favorite taco sauce on the shelf! I feel I must give a big shout-out to SHAW'S Supermarkets for making me one happy mama! Shaw's, you have made a new and loyal customer in me!

And here is my Holy Grail. .. La Victoria Taco Sauce.

And when I finally begin seeing THIS in the local grocery stores...

I will think I've died and gone to heaven.