That said, I still eat Tex Mex 2-3 times a week, but always look forward to my visits back to Houston/Austin. Unfortunately don't make it to SA too often but will give that place a try next time I do.

California would like a word with you...

To call Cal/Mex cuisine 'horrible' is patently ridiculous. If you can say that, haven't had a gordita from an L.A. roach coach, or a green corn tamale from El Cholo, or a Mission style burrito, etc etc.

Oh, and lest we not forget San Diego - a legit fish taco is sublime.

Cal mex is great. Just don’t call it Tex mex.

Agree with you on the food situation in Dallas in a general sense. But you can find loads of great tex-mex in East Dallas and Oak Cliff.

> great tex-mex in East Dallas and Oak Cliff

This is what is weird to me in Dallas. I have to go to certain parts of town to find decent tex mex. These are both 20-30 minutes away from where I live! I never had this problem in Houston or Austin. There was always some little cinder block building in/near the neighborhood run by owner pumping out great stuff.

I've tried a few of these places in East Plano or Harry Hines area that look authentic from the outside. All occasions they were actually Guatemalan or El Salvadorian which was a surprise to me.

Dallas has AMAZING tex mex. Dallas popularized tex mex to the world with el chico and el fenix. you are being insanely reductive. We have a great food scene.

And Dallas doesn't have very many Guatemalan spots (I wish we had more) so I sense you are being intentionally obtuse in your post.

Are you from Dallas? If so, I think your bias is likely too strong to sense how good this food culture is. Everyone I meet that grew up here thinks it's a great food culture just because there are a ton of restaurants and they are mostly pretty good. But, coming from Houston/Austin, I see;

1) too many chains (not a problem alone, but generally correlates to poor execution/quality) 2) restaurants rarely change their menus (good chefs change their menus!) 3) lacking depth of cuisine (we're not as international of a city as we think we are: the ethnic food options are lacking, there are some and I've seen improvements but generally people just want more burgers and more steaks) 4) we are copy cats; if you travel to other cities with good food culture it's easy to see food trends a year before they reach Dallas - I think this is related to not being chef driven, our restaurants have executive chefs that design a menu once a year, they are not driving new trends)

> doesn't have very many Guatemalan spots

I know several in Irving and along Harry Hines/Denton Drive between Love & 635

The term "authentic" tex mex is silly in the first place because it is regional (otherwise known as.. "authentic") food with replacement ingredients based on what was available here.

People that grew up here know its a good food city because... we know the spots. You'd only think Dallas has only chains if you only knew about chains.

Wouldn't that be fondue?

Assuming you're not cracking wise, that would be a reference to the American "Melting Pot," that is the mixing of cultures, as opposed to a culinary term.

Recipes we got in text form we typeset directly with almost no editing, recipes we got in image form, we included in image form. I did the layout with Scribus, and then we got copies printed and handed them out as our wedding favors.

It was exhausting work.

I don't think I've ever underestimated the scope of a project quite as badly as that one. If it weren't for a substantial volume of bourbon, and the fact that I was between jobs at the time and could work on it full-time, we'd have never gotten it done in time for the wedding.

As it was, we were way too close to deadline to get the printing and binding done inexpensively from an internet vendor. We ended up using a local printer and binder, and while it was a lot more expensive than going with an internet vendor, they really pulled the project out of the fire for us[0].

All this to say: What you're doing sounds amazing. And as you've discovered, is an astonishing amount of work. If you keep it up, I promise that the results will be worth it, but it's a long way to go to get there.

I would caution you that even if you manage to OCR the text with relatively few errors, a lot of the work in doing a cookbook is in the layout. You may have discovered this already, and if so I apologize, but getting the text into electronic form is, at most, half the battle.

Good luck, and if you get through this project, please submit it to Show HN so we can all see it!

[0] Red Sun Press deserves a shout-out for their work and their willingness to deal with a print run of <100 copies a <100 page book. If you're in the Boston area, I highly recommend them: http://www.redsunpress.com/

San Antonio also opened my mind to true Mexican, like Jalisco style food heavy on lard, onion and fried stuff like Carnitas.

I think it's just fundamentally different cuisine. I was pretty baffled when I went in to a breakfast place and they had breakfast tacos with eggs, sausage and potatoes. I literally thought that was something McDonald's invented to seem "Mexican." The Mexican breakfasts I get have smoked beef tongue and stuff like that. There isn't really that much cheese either.

Another thing, and I'm not sure it makes a huge difference, but, the Mexicans I know up here tend to be from southern Mexico. The few Mexicans I know from further north say that the food in Chicago is mostly from Southern Mexico.

Tex-mex is pretty good, but if you are expecting Mexican food it's not really the same. It needs to be appreciated on it's own merits.

It's most related to northern Mexican cuisine, but pretty distant from that of, say, the Valley of Mexico or the Yucatan or Mexico's Pacific Coast, among others. Mexico has diverse regional cuisines, often influenced by the cuisines of the different pre-colonization local cultures (but also influenced by different post-colonization immigration patterns and other factors.)

Now, look at a Chicago Italian beef. Look at Pat's, Geno's, or Ray's in Philly. Look at a New Orleans Po' Boy and an East Coast grinder.

You think there's no regional variety within a country? Are you going to tell a Philly guy his cheesesteak isn't authentic because it's different from what you're used to?

Texas, California, Baja California, the Yucatan, central Mexico, southern Mexico, the northern end of the Gulf coast in Mexico, and north central Mexico are all very different places.

You're not missing anything, that is tex-mex and I promise you it is not worse. That is just how it looks but it's awesome.

Long story short: people's low-res cell phone photos of half-eaten food taken under fluorescent lights basically indicate nothing about the food.

[1] https://www.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/usa/documents/newbigma...

[2] http://louiseroserailton.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mcdo...

[3] http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/10/article-2171302-13...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0931722462/ref=tmm_p...

Bought a copy off of eBay for $10. Not sure what the above is about.

Not really; it's not any more of a melting pot than south-of-the-border Mexican cuisine is, or than California cuisine is (among many others.) It's just a melting pot with different sources and biases.

Yes, but the definite article “the” is exclusive and indicates a unique status, as opposed to the indefinite article “a” which is inclusive and admits a potentially shared status.

Tex-Mex is perhaps a quintessential melting pot cuisine, but it's not the quintessential one.

[0] except in the context of some feature where the example perfectly represents the aggregate in a way no other single example does.