Mineral Wells Area News

By Amy Bearden

It’s Taco Tuesday — and I’m mad.

Not at my kids. Not at the dog. Not even at the disaster zone that used to be my kitchen.

I’m mad because I still can’t find my La Tiara taco shells.

You know the ones. Light. Airy. Just enough crunch to announce their presence, but delicate enough to shatter like my dreams the moment you looked at them sideways.

I discovered them eight years ago while navigating my way through the wild world of low-carb living. They were my salvation — low on carbs, high on the kind of joy that makes you forget you’re technically eating diet food.

But then… they vanished.

At first, it was innocent enough. A grocery order with a substitution. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just grab them next time.” Then another substitution. And another. Suddenly I was haunting the aisles of every store I walked into like some kind of carb-conscious phantom, scanning shelves with the intensity of a detective at a crime scene.

Shelf after shelf of imposters. Hard Shell. Stand ‘N Stuff. Taco Bell brand. All liars. All pretenders to the throne.

I turned to the internet, fingers flying across the keyboard like I was searching for a cure for something terminal. Because wasn’t I?

Nothing.

Then I saw it: a 12-pack of La Tiara taco shells on eBay — going for $5,000.

Five. Thousand. Dollars.

I don’t know if they came with a deed to beachfront property and a personal mariachi band, but at that point, reality hit me. My finger hovered over “Buy It Now” long enough for my rational brain to stage an intervention.

That’s when I knew something was wrong. Deeply, emotionally, carnitas-level wrong.

Turns out the company that made them — Gladstone Food Products — went under. No warning. No farewell tour. No “goodbye cruel world” clearance sale. Just poof. Taco ghosts, haunting the dreams of low-carb warriors everywhere.

But I wasn’t alone in my grief. In my desperation, I stumbled onto a Facebook group today. A support group, really. Sixteen thousand people strong, all whispering into the void, “Do you remember?” like war veterans sharing classified trauma.

I scrolled through post after post — memories, conspiracy theories, memes, and maybe a few too many gifs of people ugly-crying into bowls of guacamole. Here was a family I never knew I needed, united by loss, bound by the shared understanding that some things — some beautiful, crispy things — are irreplaceable.

Then — hope.

In May, a Clay County judge approved the sale of the company, and now General Mills owns La Tiara. Will they bring the shells back? No one knows for sure. But they’d be smart to. Sixteen thousand people don’t join a Facebook group about discontinued taco shells unless there’s something worth fighting for.

Until then, I’ll be hitting up the local taqueria for $2 soft tacos on Tuesdays, mourning the loss of crunch itself while pretending these soggy consolation prizes are just as good.

(They’re not. The shells, not the margaritas. The margaritas are helping.)

So if you’re out there, General Mills, listening to the collective wail of the taco-deprived masses…

Release the shells. America is waiting. And we’re getting hangry.

Amy Bearden, along with her digital assistant Claud, created this story to lighten the heavy news Texans have had to consume the last several days. She has become the newest member of the “Bring Back La Tiara Taco Shells” Facebook support group and can be reached at her kitchen table, surrounded by inferior shell fragments.