Not pizza, not fish tacos.  Not a salad or sub sandwich.

160 calories each, two for 99 cents.  A taste so unique it has not been duplicated...Jack in the Box tacos.

I usually rant about substantive things but today while contemplating what to blog about, my son asked if we could have Jack in the Box tacos for dinner.  At that price, when I can have four of the southwestern delicacies for less than seven hundred calories, who was I to say no?

I'm not going to eat four, though...just two, and whatever is left on the kids' plates. 

Jack in the Box tacos are spicy, but not over the top...the meat inside of the taco is intermixed with the melted cheese, then the shredded lettuce sits atop that.  Above the lettuce is Jack's famous taco sauce, a reddish-brown sauce that completes the convenient and crunchy indulgence.  The sauce sits beautifully beneath tip top of the taco shell, the only part of the food not saturated with corn oil or something hopefully not partially hydrogenated.

I have never tasted its equal.  I love tacos and I have eaten them all over, from Tijuana to the Yucatan Peninsula to Canada...but Jack has captured something, made it a worthy and justifiable indulgence for those of us watching our calories, and at less than 45 cents each, making it all too easy to purchase several at a time.

I have been doing that - purchasing several at a time since I was a teenager with pocket change and much better metabolism than what I have now, since I was a college student who spent too much money on expensive coffees and didn't have enough cash for a snack on campus but with plenty of quarters at the bottom of my backpack, and now that my kids eat fast food (every once in a while) and I avoid cheeseburgers and fries.

A justifiable indulgence...perfect with a Diet Dr. Pepper.

I don't have anything poignant right now - I just want a taco, or four.