Yesterday I went to Philadelphia with my sister, who's visiting from L.A. She's never been there, so we did the usual tourist stuff. We had cheesesteak sandwiches, we saw the Liberty Bell, and we went to Independence Hall, where -- oh, I don't know -- I guess somebody signed something.

Why do I have this gap in my knowledge? I went to school in California, where "history" involves vanishing orange groves, racist Disney movies, and 1967 Chevy Impalas. I got tickets for a tour at Independence Hall hoping to fill in some of these gaps, like how we broke away from England, how the colonies united into a single country, and how Washington became our first president. Unfortunately, the tour guide was a volunteer, and he was worth every penny they paid him. I wish I'd transcribed his fascinating rantings, but instead I'll offer you what must be his recipe for chicken tacos.

Chicken Tacos
So, in the end we have chicken tacos on a plate, and we're putting hot sauce on them. How did these chicken tacos get on the plate? Flashback fifteen minutes: you're chopping lettuce. You're frying tortillas. How many types of tortillas are there? That's right, two.

Jump ahead six-and-a-half minutes. You're chopping onions. You're grating cheese. How many types of cheese are there? That's right, sixty-three. You're grating cheese, and you're probably thinking, "Wait, I haven't started the chicken yet." You look over at the stove and what do you see? That's right. There's no chicken on it. So let's start the chicken now.

Flash back six months. There's a big white egg. Maybe a chicken is sitting on it, maybe not. What is the farmer saying? "I'm not waiting around for this thing to hatch; I'll going to sell it now."

There's a whole intricate series of steps here which I don't have time to explain, so let's just say somehow your egg gets to the store. It's in a carton with eleven others, each separate eggs from different chicken parents. How many types of chickens are there? That's right, fourteen. They have nothing in common except they're all in the same cardboard carton. If you had to put one of these eggs in charge, which would you choose? The biggest? The whitest? That's the puzzle our Founding Fathers faced. They had the eggs, they had the Hollandaise, and they had the last bitter scraps of a tyrannical English muffin.

They put them together on a plate. And that's it. Isn't it glorious? Eggs Bened-- Chicken Tacos. Thank you for coming!