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Thursday Is National Burrito Day: Finally A Cure For The Munchies

By Coburn Palmer
Published on: 08:27 PST, Apr 6, 2016

Carne asada with refried beans and salsa smothered with cheese, guacamole, and sour cream wrapped in a warm flour tortilla is a perfect meal brought to America from Mexico, and now there’s a national holiday to celebrate it.

Thursday, April 7 is National Burrito Day, and restaurants across the country are offering great deals on the savory food that has been curing the munchies for generations.

The true origins of the burrito have been lost to the mists of time, but legend tells us a food merchant named Juan Mendez may have created the food around the same time as the Mexican Revolution.

Mendez used to wrap his food in a big homemade flour tortilla to keep it warm for his hungry customers while he travelled on his donkey cart around Juarez (Chihuahua), Mexico, in the early 1900s, according to TodayIFoundOut.

In Spanish, burro means donkey, and the diminutive would be burrito; every day Mendez’s hungry customers would wait for his burrito cart to cure their munchies.

The first written record of the burrito appears in the Diccionario de Mexicanismos in 1895; the book defines a burrito as rolled tortilla with meat and other ingredients inside.

The first official mention of a burrito in the United States is on a menu in the Los Angeles El Cholo Spanish Café in the 1930s, although the popular food was probably around long before then. The word burrito first appeared in the Oxford English dictionary in 1958.

If you’re a burrito lover, and let’s face it who isn’t, it might be possible to find love using the new app Burrit-O, a new mobile dating app that matches partners based on their burrito preferences. The software, available from Zoosk, compares burrito lovers based on their choice of 32 burrito ingredients and matches up those most likely to enjoy eating together.

The monumentally important holiday National Burrito Day normally falls on the first Thursday of April, and restaurants across the country have been preparing all year to serve up their mouth-watering goodness.

Rubio’s is offering $1 off their burrito especial with all natural chicken, handmade guacamole, citrus, rice black beans, lettuce, salsa fresca, and chipotle sauce.

Del Taco is offering e-club members a free iced coffee when they purchase a chorizo epic scrambler, and Blue Coast Burrito is offering buy-one-get-one-free burritos only on April 7.

The delightful Tex-Mex food known as the burrito has captured the imagination of food lovers everywhere. In 1997, The Onion published a satirical story that advertised the creation of a “Morning After” Burrito that was so full of zesty spices it could cause de-fertilization if consumed within 36 hours after intercourse.

The burrito is so popular one hungry marathon runner couldn’t resist stopping for a bite at the 20-mile mark of the Knoxville Marathon before finishing the race with a time of six hours and six minutes.

Most burritos aren’t that spicy, however, and restaurants across the country will be offering up great deals on the tasty food all day Thursday, April 7. For more information, contact your local burrito dealer.

Residents in California’s Central Valley understand this hunger, and they’ve started the Bakersfield Burrito Project to feed the hungry one burrito at a time.

In case you were wondering National Taco Day is October 4 this year, while National Nachos Day is November 6.

Where will you be eating your tasty burrito this National Burrito Day?

[Image via Dmitry Lobanov/Shutterstock]

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