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My late sister’s eldest son, Mark, celebrates a late December birthday. He called me this year from Oregon, where he now lives, to ask for some help with the recipe he prepares for his own birthday dinner — because it’s the dish that his mother prepared for him every year to celebrate that special day.

In our family, they’re called Cindy tacos. Most ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ans probably know them better as flautas or taquitos. But we call them Cindy tacos after my sister’s best friend, who introduced them to us back in the ’70s.

They require a beef filling — this year, Mark wanted to use my machaca recipe — but you could also use birria or another shredded beef. And they require something else that’s totally not traditional: Velveeta.

Although Cindy grew up in Nogales, she and her family lived up the hill from my sister’s house near Sunset and Flowing Wells roads. I lived with my sister’s family during that period, functioning as kind of a nanny to Mark when I wasn’t working at the now-defunct Levy’s department store. Mark and I were very close.

Cindy taught my sister, Tamsen, to make her family’s version of flautas, and they were ever after known simply as Cindy tacos. Tam loved eating them — “they’re so fattening!� she’d cry — but she hated making them. Our family’s cooking style didn’t include much frying, let alone with lard, and the tedious assembly-then-cooking irritated her.

But 6-year-old Mark was her little prince. I still remember the look on her face when, as was the family’s custom, she asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner. Without skipping a beat, he chirped “Cindy tacos!� The look on her face was so complicated; she somehow managed to express helpless adoration, irritation, and resignation all at once.

I don’t remember Cindy tacos being served as part of a meal – with sides like salad or refried beans or anything else. We didn’t even use salsa with them. Instead, we all kind of stood around the kitchen island and ate them as fast as she could fry them. Only when we were sated could my sister eat her own portion.

Mark remembers it that way, too, he told me on the phone. And that’s the way he served them this year. In a follow-up text, he told me that he’d prepared more than 30 Cindy tacos for his family of five and said woefully that “they were all gone in less than 10 minutes. A lot of work for that brief pleasure!�

So, in the end, this is the story of how recipes travel, and how they become incorporated into new traditions. It’s how a Nogales family’s recipe has become part of three generations of my Michigan-bred family’s history, and how it represents a mother’s love, the love for a friend and a father’s love. Mark’s own children are old enough now to remember him making Cindy tacos both to honor his late mother, and to celebrate his own birthday. Perhaps they, too, will make Cindy tacos for their own families long after I am gone.

I think both Cindy and Tam would be amused.

HOW TO MAKE CINDY TACOS

Yield will depend on how much filling you have

Make the shredded beef filling the day before. Reheat the filling when it’s time to fill and roll the tacos for frying. Eat these hot; they are nowhere near as good the next day.

INGREDIENTS

Corn tortillas, to suit the amount of filling you have

Shredded beef filling

Velveeta, cut into sticks about 1/2 inch square by 4 inches long

Lard, for frying

PREPARATION

Preheat the oven to its lowest setting.

Lay a tortilla on a work surface. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of filling down the center and top with a little stick of Velveeta. Roll the taco into a cylinder and set it aside while you prepare enough tacos for the first batch of frying.

Heat the lard in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it is fragrant. Carefully lay the tacos, seam-side down, in the hot fat and cook until they are well browned on the bottom. Turn the tacos and continue to brown on all sides. Remove to a plate covered with paper towels to drain. Slide the plate into the oven to keep warm while you prepare the remaining tacos.