I was introduced to taco trucks when I was about 17 in Indio, CA. We were down in California for a horse show and since most of the grooms at the show grounds were hispanic, there were always taco trucks driving up and down the barn aisles stopping for hungry equestrians and grooms alike. For an Alaskan girl who'd just come from temperatures hovering around 0-15º F, my introduction to mandarin Jarritos in the 95º heat was ... magical. But also magical was my introduction to the taco truck taco.
Growing up in Alaska, there's not a huge traditional hispanic foods market (or at least none that I was aware of). We had Taco Bell (gross), and Taco King, which was right near my high school and was actually amazing, and a couple other mexican places, but nothing akin to a taco truck. Maybe they exist up there, but I have a feeling it's not warm enough to make tacos in a truck when it's 0º F. Anyways, when I moved to Tacoma and discovered that there are taco trucks here I got super excited. Taco truck tacos are the best tacos. Whatever they do inside those aluminum magic boxes is some kind of witchcraft or something, because it's SO good. I get the same thing every time: 3 carnitas tacos with avocado. Yum! One of my friends had found a crock pot carnitas recipe online and said it was delicious, so I figured I'd use the recipe as a launch pad for trying to make tacos like those magic ones in from the taco truck. I threw some carnitas in corn tortillas along with diced onion, cilantro and avocado with a squirt of lime on each one. Mine weren't quite as magical (I'm not sure if it's possible to recreate such magic), but they were delicious!
