Category: green chile

Aaaaaand we’re back…

Had a *fabulous* time this weekend in southern New Mexico. The weather was clear and cold and my fair New Mexico is looking gorgeous. I didn’t know how much I needed that trip back home, but I can say I feel “right” since I got back.

The trip was mostly to visit with my best friend, her husband, and my two amazing goddaughters (now 9 and 6). My own version of NewMexiKen’s sweeties.

And I ate. Oh did I eat. Whoa. My best friend and her husband are both amazing cooks, and they treated me right for three solid days.

I got a good snootful of green chile, so I can continue to survive with the appalling lack here in the Bay Area.

I also got a chance to eat oryx. This was my first try at oryx and it was TASTY! My dad was a hunter, so I’ve eaten a variety of game meat sampled from the great state of New Mexico and have no qualms. My friend’s husband is especially good at field dressing so as to help alleviate the gamey taste, so what he brings home is really fantastic.

Plus he’s good with the seasoning, so the outcome was tender, sweet, delicious and quite satisfying. I was able to have oryx prepared a variety of different ways, but by far the most amazing was tacos al carbon cooked down on a disk. (you gotta love game meat cooked on something that used to be a farm implement)

Reflecting on the last post I wrote about good food bringing people together, I smiled on Sunday night when, at the same moment, my best friend was frying rellenos, her husband was cutting up the meat for tacos and I was rolling enchiladas with the help of my oldest goddaughter. While we worked, we shared stories and listened to good music.

That right there is family, and I’m deeply grateful to have it. Food made with love tastes that much better.

I also had the chance to drive up to Cloudcroft looking for snow. They had gotten three inches a few days back, but as you can see by the photo below, there wasn’t much left on the ground. It was a nice day trip anyway. Had lunch, shopped a bit, took a few photos and spent time with my friend.

Back home now. Mainly I’m just a bit homesick, happy to have made the visit and glad to be back in the house with The Good Man and the Cranky Cat.

This going back to work thing, on the other hand……….

(click for full size)

Photo by Karen Fayeth

My People

I am always filled with a not-so-quiet joy when I see the place from whence I came showcased on the big stage.

It somehow validates me.

Sure, having Big Bad Billy run for President surely upped New Mexico’s cool quotient and “put us on the map” in plenty of ways.

But my heart sang and my eyes wept last night watching an episode of “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel.

I love this show. Starring Anthony Bourdain, a career chef, New Jersey born, New York resident. This is a high class, high dollar guy who knows his food.

He was head chef at upscale Les Halles in New York for many years. He’s also a prolific writer and avid traveler. I’ve read a few of his books, many of his editorials and some blog posts. His writing is tight, snarky and well, just good.

I’ve watched his food/travel show since it was called something different for a season on the Food Network. I’ve also seen every episode of the long running series now on the Travel Channel.

I’ve been around the world with Tony. Watched him get pummeled by bulky bodybuilders in Finland, seen him travel the back roads of Viet Nam eating god knows what, watched him get bucked off a four wheeler in New Zealand, and am intimately familiar with his love for all pork products.

So last night’s episode (actually, it was last week’s, I missed it and caught a rerun), Anthony was given use of a BMW SUV, then set out on a road trip to the American Southwest.

Hoookay, Mr. Snappy Chef Boy, you are dancing on my terrain now.

I was pretty certain I’d see plenty of Arizona, lots of Texas, and none of my Fair New Mexico.

I was wrong.

In between stops in Indio, CA (god, why would *anyone* willingly stop there) and Waco, TX (home of one Mr. Ted Nugent), the No Reservations crew made a stop in Hatch.

Yes, Hatch, New Mexico, home of one of the finest food ingredients in the world.

Tony sat at a vinyl-topped table with the owners of The Pepper Pot, and talked with them about the troubles of chile farmers (mostly that there is lack of demand, so farmers are converting crops to more profitable items, like corn).

While they talked, the host was served both a red and a green enchilada.

And Mr. Bourdain, world traveler, renowned chef, he of highly calibrated taste buds turned to the camera and said, “That is the best enchilada I have ever eaten.”

Yes, yes it is. The best you’ll *ever* eat.

Take that to Manhattan, big man.

Because if it was the last day of my life, and I was told that I could choose one of two places for my last meal: a high end, high dollar establishment, or a crappy diner in New Mexico, there would be no contest.

Chicken enchiladas, green, with a fried egg and sour cream.

And I would go quietly into that great beyond with a big smile and a full belly.

Salute to my home state for getting a good review from a snarky host of a travel show!

To celebrate, I’ll have feet on the ground in just less than two weeks.

Because it’s time. And because my sweet New Mexico calls to me.

Mostly because my best friend said she’d make rellenos.

Green chile chicken enchiladas, here I come!

Stop the world and let me off

Lots of weirdity going on in the world. Lots of changes, flip outs, oddness.

Market up. Market down. New president in a month.

And I think I’m changing jobs soon. Whoa Nellie!

Funnily enough, there is some comfort in my reading the ABQjournal during these crazy times.

Guess what? The Saturday Balloon Fiesta’s mass ascension didn’t happen! Too windy!

Reeeeally? That almost never always happens!

Oh Fair New Mexico, granting me comfort during troubled times.

May your winds blow gustily over the middle Rio Grande Valley and may the annual scent of roasting green chiles waft my way.

Watery eyes, sweating and that "whooooo" sound in…

3….2…..1…..

“Adam Lagesse, 25, a produce manager for H.E.B., a supermarket chain out of Austin, Texas, bites into a green chile pod Wednesday as he and other Texas grocers toured a field in Salem, N.M., north of Hatch. They were learning how the green chile industry operates so they can better market the vegetable grown in New Mexico to their consumers.”

From the Las Cruces Sun News.

Home again, home again…

…dancing a jig.

Had an easy and non-eventful drive from the greater Barstow metropolitan area to the Bay Area where we were greeted with an oppressive haze from the multitudinous fires burning. None near where we live, but all around. Ugh. The sky is terrible. It’s cold. It’s windy. It’s not Oh Fair New Mexico.

And there’s no green chile.

I’m unpacking, doing laundry and getting ready to go back to work tomorrow. Boo!

I asked The Good Man what he wanted for lunch today. “Green chile,” he replied and we both sighed in sorrow.

“I didn’t get enough mexican food while we were in New Mexico,” he lamented. We had it every day….

What do they call someone who introduces another to their addiction? Cuz that’s what I am. I made a Brooklyn boy a green chile addict. Heh!

Meanwhile, life goes on. The Feline is fine but a big clingy. She missed us in her own way.

Back to normal life, I suppose. I miss New Mexico more than ever…..