We are cycling into Fall mode. Birds are moving, leaves are turning and harvest festivals are…festing!? Oh well, you know what I mean.
Chasing LBJs (a technical birding term meaning Little Brown Jobs)
Even though the hummingbirds have been migrating through since late July, there are still some late travelers. I haven’t seen a Rufous hummer in weeks—and you definitely don’t miss those aggressive guys. Today, I saw a diminutive female calliope hummer darting through the junipers outside the kitchen window and I occasionally still hear the trill of the broadtailed hummer’s tail. But all the hummers are just about gone. It is getting cool up here and will be cool as well on the sky islands on which bounty and water they must rely as they traverse the deserts on their way to their winter grounds; cool translates to megaenergy consumption for these few-ounce creatures.
Several flocks of verrrry small sparrows have moved into the neighborhood as the grasses have put out their seed heads. I can’t get a fix on them – they are so small and move so quickly, and they look like a combination of 3 species but not enough like any one! When I walk Nutmeg, they are skulking in the grass along the edge of the roadway, and they scatter like blown leaves when we get within 2 feet, startling Nutmeg and out-quicking my ability to get my binocs to my eyes and focus. I have seen and identified several fall warblers moving through in ones and twos. Such a treat to catch a glimpse of yellow, track it down and then find its image in my Sibley’s when I get home. But there are others – oh, the category “confusing fall warblers” is aptly named in the bird guide. Isn’t it true that at most conferences, it is de rigueur for attendees to wear name badges for easy identification. Why not at these migration conferences: “Hi My Name Is…Mr. Wilson Warbler.”
I was treated to a spectacular hawk display one late afternoon last week as I sat on the back patio. I watched first one, then two hawks and several ravens conduct their avian version of the Firebird across the sky. Act 1 of the ballet: one hawk was being teased by the ravens – diving, swooping, darting in, toward and around the hawk as all circled on the stage overhead. Act 2: the second hawk appeared, the ravens became the supporting cast and the two hawks took center stage. On a pass, the two were flying in Blue Angels formation: one off the wingtip, slightly behind and slightly above the other. On the next pass: one dancer above dove down and under, barrel-rolling underneath its partner and dropping away. Pass number three: again, one partner diving below and turning belly-up while the partner above dropped its talons, the extension of the talons clear against the blue sky-curtain background. What kind of hawks? Who knows…and who cares! The Firebird ballet concluded with the hawks breaking apart and exiting stage right and stage left, each with its own raven chorus.
On Saturday, we went over to the Mimbres Valley for the harvest festival and drove home on the Trail of the Mountain Spirit, which took us through the Gila over the mountains to Pinos Altos. We skirted the upper-most edge of the Mimbres Valley, winding through the ponderosa pines but with a view across an achingly-beautiful valley floor of grasses, stream beds, the river itself and a clear blue ceiling above. My attention was caught by the movement of several large birds flying flat-winged. Dihedral wing shape almost invariably means vulture, but flat-winged…it was worth a look. So I stopped the car almost in the middle of the road and climbed out – you can do stuff like that here without the likelihood of holding up the one-car-per-20-minute traffic. There were 4 or 5 hawks soaring communally above. I don’t think I’ve seen that many coasting the currents together before. As far as I recall, I’ve seen no more than two, usually a mated or courting pair. But here they were making the best of the warm currents flowing between the ridges. Too far away to ID. But again, it didn’t matter. I can get obsessed with reducing the magic to a lifelist notation. But it’s the magic, not the notation, that is sustenance.
And Other Fall Fun
So I mentioned the Mimbres Fall Harvest Festival. Small but fun. Attended an interesting presentation on rain-water harvesting for gardening. We want to set up a rain-water harvesting system when we build, not just for gardening, but also to provide some household water as backup to the city water we will tap. Among the numbers of vendors – well, better to say, among the several vendors (!) was a booth for the new winery that just opened in the Valley. They have been at Silver City’s farmers market selling wine jellies, but they are now launching their wines. They can’t serve the wines at the festival for obvious reasons, but what they can do –and did – was to bring baskets of their wine grapes. No, I didn’t jump into a barrel and crush my own vintage. But I did get to sample the raw source of their pinot noir, merlot and cabernet franc. I was also encouraged to taste a golden grape that instantly took me back to fall in South Carolina at my grandparents: scuppernong grapes!! These weren’t scuppernongs; they were a golden variety out of upstate NY. But if I had been blindfolded and asked to source a memory… Interestingly, when the name, scuppernong, popped involuntarily out of my mouth, the owner said it was the second time he’d heard that, that day. I must not be the only southerner around. By the way, did you know that New Mexico was the first, um, not-state in the Union to grow wine grapes and make wine? The Spanish priest-explorer-missionaries brought wine grapes to this Mexican-Indian territory when they first arrived. The modern-day vintner met on Sunday will have reds for tasting and sale in time, he thinks, for the holidays. Not as cheap as Yellowtail, but a bottle or two will be a nice treat.
And, the arts season is getting underway. Oklahoma! will be presented this weekend, with a local cast. What is fun for me to anticipate is that we now know a number of the performers. Where last fall, we were newbies and enjoyed discovering the local performance landscape, now we have friends and acquaintances up on stage that we can root for, applaud for, and cringe for in case of an off note or flubbed line!
Fall is definitely here. The cottonwoods are beginning to go gold and as we came across the mountains on Saturday, we saw an understory full of blazing-red sumac. The monsoons have passed into the lore of 2009 and have left us with skies reminiscent of many western-themed songs – not a cloud and blues ranging from indigo to robins’ eggs. We arrived in Silver City in November 2008, so we have seen the back-half of fall. Now we are enjoying it in full measure. I wonder what Indian Summer is like, here?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A dilemma of deer
Deer oh dear, how many deer there are here. And the numbers have become a real dilemma for the town. Recent Town Council discussions, covered at length in the local paper, and debated in the local sound-off columns, have fired the debate: what to do about all these deer.
Hunt them? That is the recommendation of the county Game and Fish department. Hold a special hunt, hire sharp-shooters, sponsor expert bow-men – reduce the population by culling. This is a typical recommendation of the hook-and-bullet crowd. Not a popular option for many former-urban dwellers who’ve relocated into wild country. Often, urban folks jump to negative judgment – conservation, especially in the West, owes much progress and success to people who hunt and fish for food or recreation. Hunt/fish organizations are often instrumental in turning the popular opinion in favor of conservation. And the argument will be made that culling is the most sure-fire way (pun intended) to manage overpopulation. Unfortunately, another argument can be made, just as persuasively, that it’s the hook-and-bullet folks that helped get us here facing the dilemma of too many bambis. Game and Fish departments at all levels, starting with the US Forest Service, have been known to cull predators and conduct re-introduction efforts to bring back deer – mule and otherwise – to habitats where they have disappeared by whatever, often natural, means. In central Maryland, white-tail deer had all but disappeared by the early 1900’s, cause not remembered by me in 2009. Hunters brought pressure on the state for a population of venison-on-the-hoof and the state graciously filled their plates by bringing a breeding population in from, I think it was, Pennsylvania. Now, across a significant portion of the state, if you drive a car for 2 years without hitting a deer, you get a plaque from your auto insurance company.
What else? Birth control! Now often touted as the ‘humane’ solution. It’s true that hunting can have ‘inhumane’ results with the possibility that the sharpshooter might miss and hit a two legged instead of the targeted four-legged. Or more likely, wound instead of kill the targeted four-legged and cause inhumane pain and suffering. Does happen. Does birth control work? I remember a conversation with a National Park Service biologist studying the overpopulation of white-tailed deer in central MD in which I facetiously suggested birth control for deer. In complete seriousness, the biologist gave me chapter-and-verse on the pros and cons of a very real alternative. At least given the state of deer medicine at the time (about 2003 or so), birth control was only administered to a ‘closed’ population, meaning one contained by man-made or natural barriers from ‘wild’ populations. The immunocontraceptive tainted the meat and if a birth-controlled deer was unknowingly hunted for food, consumption of the meat had deleterious effects on the consumer. More critically to the control effort, the vaccine still today has a low percentage of success and has to be re-administered every breeding season. Most critically, the solution is prohibitively expensive, costing as much as $1,000 per doe so vaccinated. What Game and Fish department, especially at a local level, has $1,000/doe times how many breeders? Does our Town Council wish to allocate additional funds to our Game and Fish folks to conduct a mass immunocontraceptive vaccine campaign -- annually!?
Hey, we can feed them!!! After all, they were here first and we moved in and pushed them out. So we are the cause of the problem and we should just step up and feed those poor critters. This is exactly the argument made by a Town Council member as printed in the Sun-News a couple of weeks ago. I am convinced that he made this argument in good conscience with the best of intention. He just couldn’t get comfortable with the notion that he and his colleagues on the Council would approve – and fund, no less – professional hunters to creep around our neighborhoods drawing an expert bead on an otherwise-innocent deer to reduce the free-range herd. He said he was more persuaded by his wife and friends that feeding was the best answer. Perhaps he should do a little research on the web. Corn, the most common feed purchased to put out for deer, does not truly “feed” the deer because they don’t get the sustenance they need from limited corn protein. Game and Fish biologists have found deer that died of starvation with full bellies. But at the heart of the matter, deer increase in suburban/urban neighborhoods because they thrive on the edges. They make their living on the seams and margins between woods for protection and human farms, gardens and landscaping. Feeding deer reinforces in several ways: keeps unhealthy deer in the population that otherwise would die of natural causes; keeps deer reproducing because they have just enough sustenance to conceive and birth, but not necessarily to foster healthy young; and concentrates deer in “feeding communities” instead of otherwise living in areas where they would be predated – or at least predated by other than 4-wheel predators! By the way, having this many deer in our neighborhoods can also attract their natural predators. The big cats sometimes follow the path of least resistance right into town to pick off an ailing or wounded deer. Many communities prohibit feeding of deer. I thought Silver City did. Maybe that’s one of the questions before the Town Council. They should vote for the ban. And they should prosecute people who put the corn or pellets out anyway. Does more harm than good. Kills the deer as surely as a rifle, but slower, silently and out of sight.
The last and least appealing option is to let the deer fend for themselves. Which means in good years, they have beautiful spindly-legged, big-eyed and big-eared spotted fawns—in singles, twins and even triplets. Over which I have ohhhed and awwwed as much as the next person. Which means that we are treated to magnificent bucks during rut season with huge racks, standing in the field with 3 does at his side. Which means that Nutmeg has something of interest to get her hackles up but which she’ll never catch. But it also means that we have to fence in our tomatoes and fragrant flowering bushes or they are nibbled to little sticks. And when there’s too little water and too little browse in bad years, the fawn mortality is high and the deer sicken and starve.
This is the 100th anniversary of Aldo Leopold’s lasting legacy to conservation, the environment and to the human community. And it started here, with the first official wilderness, the Gila Wilderness. We are celebrating his legacy here in Silver City this year. He wrote frequently about the impact that removing predators from the landscape had on the deer population. He wrote about the ethics of managing deer herds, including hunting. He wrote about the education of the community about the wildlife around them. Now we have a dilemma of deer on the doorstep of his legacy. Hmmm. What will our Town Council decide?
Hunt them? That is the recommendation of the county Game and Fish department. Hold a special hunt, hire sharp-shooters, sponsor expert bow-men – reduce the population by culling. This is a typical recommendation of the hook-and-bullet crowd. Not a popular option for many former-urban dwellers who’ve relocated into wild country. Often, urban folks jump to negative judgment – conservation, especially in the West, owes much progress and success to people who hunt and fish for food or recreation. Hunt/fish organizations are often instrumental in turning the popular opinion in favor of conservation. And the argument will be made that culling is the most sure-fire way (pun intended) to manage overpopulation. Unfortunately, another argument can be made, just as persuasively, that it’s the hook-and-bullet folks that helped get us here facing the dilemma of too many bambis. Game and Fish departments at all levels, starting with the US Forest Service, have been known to cull predators and conduct re-introduction efforts to bring back deer – mule and otherwise – to habitats where they have disappeared by whatever, often natural, means. In central Maryland, white-tail deer had all but disappeared by the early 1900’s, cause not remembered by me in 2009. Hunters brought pressure on the state for a population of venison-on-the-hoof and the state graciously filled their plates by bringing a breeding population in from, I think it was, Pennsylvania. Now, across a significant portion of the state, if you drive a car for 2 years without hitting a deer, you get a plaque from your auto insurance company.
What else? Birth control! Now often touted as the ‘humane’ solution. It’s true that hunting can have ‘inhumane’ results with the possibility that the sharpshooter might miss and hit a two legged instead of the targeted four-legged. Or more likely, wound instead of kill the targeted four-legged and cause inhumane pain and suffering. Does happen. Does birth control work? I remember a conversation with a National Park Service biologist studying the overpopulation of white-tailed deer in central MD in which I facetiously suggested birth control for deer. In complete seriousness, the biologist gave me chapter-and-verse on the pros and cons of a very real alternative. At least given the state of deer medicine at the time (about 2003 or so), birth control was only administered to a ‘closed’ population, meaning one contained by man-made or natural barriers from ‘wild’ populations. The immunocontraceptive tainted the meat and if a birth-controlled deer was unknowingly hunted for food, consumption of the meat had deleterious effects on the consumer. More critically to the control effort, the vaccine still today has a low percentage of success and has to be re-administered every breeding season. Most critically, the solution is prohibitively expensive, costing as much as $1,000 per doe so vaccinated. What Game and Fish department, especially at a local level, has $1,000/doe times how many breeders? Does our Town Council wish to allocate additional funds to our Game and Fish folks to conduct a mass immunocontraceptive vaccine campaign -- annually!?
Hey, we can feed them!!! After all, they were here first and we moved in and pushed them out. So we are the cause of the problem and we should just step up and feed those poor critters. This is exactly the argument made by a Town Council member as printed in the Sun-News a couple of weeks ago. I am convinced that he made this argument in good conscience with the best of intention. He just couldn’t get comfortable with the notion that he and his colleagues on the Council would approve – and fund, no less – professional hunters to creep around our neighborhoods drawing an expert bead on an otherwise-innocent deer to reduce the free-range herd. He said he was more persuaded by his wife and friends that feeding was the best answer. Perhaps he should do a little research on the web. Corn, the most common feed purchased to put out for deer, does not truly “feed” the deer because they don’t get the sustenance they need from limited corn protein. Game and Fish biologists have found deer that died of starvation with full bellies. But at the heart of the matter, deer increase in suburban/urban neighborhoods because they thrive on the edges. They make their living on the seams and margins between woods for protection and human farms, gardens and landscaping. Feeding deer reinforces in several ways: keeps unhealthy deer in the population that otherwise would die of natural causes; keeps deer reproducing because they have just enough sustenance to conceive and birth, but not necessarily to foster healthy young; and concentrates deer in “feeding communities” instead of otherwise living in areas where they would be predated – or at least predated by other than 4-wheel predators! By the way, having this many deer in our neighborhoods can also attract their natural predators. The big cats sometimes follow the path of least resistance right into town to pick off an ailing or wounded deer. Many communities prohibit feeding of deer. I thought Silver City did. Maybe that’s one of the questions before the Town Council. They should vote for the ban. And they should prosecute people who put the corn or pellets out anyway. Does more harm than good. Kills the deer as surely as a rifle, but slower, silently and out of sight.
The last and least appealing option is to let the deer fend for themselves. Which means in good years, they have beautiful spindly-legged, big-eyed and big-eared spotted fawns—in singles, twins and even triplets. Over which I have ohhhed and awwwed as much as the next person. Which means that we are treated to magnificent bucks during rut season with huge racks, standing in the field with 3 does at his side. Which means that Nutmeg has something of interest to get her hackles up but which she’ll never catch. But it also means that we have to fence in our tomatoes and fragrant flowering bushes or they are nibbled to little sticks. And when there’s too little water and too little browse in bad years, the fawn mortality is high and the deer sicken and starve.
This is the 100th anniversary of Aldo Leopold’s lasting legacy to conservation, the environment and to the human community. And it started here, with the first official wilderness, the Gila Wilderness. We are celebrating his legacy here in Silver City this year. He wrote frequently about the impact that removing predators from the landscape had on the deer population. He wrote about the ethics of managing deer herds, including hunting. He wrote about the education of the community about the wildlife around them. Now we have a dilemma of deer on the doorstep of his legacy. Hmmm. What will our Town Council decide?
Saturday, September 19, 2009
A Hot Time in the Old Town
Cliché’s become clichés because they start as truths. Last weekend, Santa Fe was on fire!
Watching Zozobra burn!
Zo-zo’-bra is a 50 foot tall marionette fondly known as Old Man Gloom. People fill his skirts with all the gloomy stuff they want to get rid of from the past year – divorce papers, deeds, debts, and symbolically, disease. Not to mention bad grades, sad thoughts, and mad feelings. Burning Zozobra is, as much as anything, a Santa-Fe-New-Year reason to party. The tradition started 85 years ago, has been going strong ever since, with 20-30,000 +/- Santa Fe’ans and tourists gathering at Ft Marcy Park during the course of the day to picnic and wait for dark, when the sparks fly—literally. At dusk, an official mounts the steps to the hem of the giant character and officiously carries out sentence on the boogeyman, calling out the fire dancer and the little 
ghosts. In this video, the gloomy Zozobra is sentenced with the jury screaming, “Burn Him!” Then, put the party on pause for 20 minutes while the fire dancer and supporting cast run up and down stairs, twirl lights, swirl scarves and generally annoy several thousand people. If I still smoked, I would have a lighter in my pocket. If I had a lighter in my pocket, I would have run up the stairs and set the boogeyman on fire. The whole time, Old Man Gloom groans and moans, growling loud displeasure when roman candles shoot off around his head. Finally, someone takes pity on the doomed red-head and shoot him with a fire bolt, which set him to full blaze.
Watching Zozobra burn!
Zo-zo’-bra is a 50 foot tall marionette fondly known as Old Man Gloom. People fill his skirts with all the gloomy stuff they want to get rid of from the past year – divorce papers, deeds, debts, and symbolically, disease. Not to mention bad grades, sad thoughts, and mad feelings. Burning Zozobra is, as much as anything, a Santa-Fe-New-Year reason to party. The tradition started 85 years ago, has been going strong ever since, with 20-30,000 +/- Santa Fe’ans and tourists gathering at Ft Marcy Park during the course of the day to picnic and wait for dark, when the sparks fly—literally. At dusk, an official mounts the steps to the hem of the giant character and officiously carries out sentence on the boogeyman, calling out the fire dancer and the little 
ghosts. In this video, the gloomy Zozobra is sentenced with the jury screaming, “Burn Him!” Then, put the party on pause for 20 minutes while the fire dancer and supporting cast run up and down stairs, twirl lights, swirl scarves and generally annoy several thousand people. If I still smoked, I would have a lighter in my pocket. If I had a lighter in my pocket, I would have run up the stairs and set the boogeyman on fire. The whole time, Old Man Gloom groans and moans, growling loud displeasure when roman candles shoot off around his head. Finally, someone takes pity on the doomed red-head and shoot him with a fire bolt, which set him to full blaze. Our nephew captured Zozobra’s fire-y end and posted it on YouTube, accompanied by the frenzied chant of the crowd, “BURN HIM!!” As the year’s glooms went up in flames and finally collapsed to a final ember, we were treated to one of the most wonderful fireworks show – real July-4th-fireworks – that I’ve ever seen, not even excepting Washington DC on Independence Day.
The Old Town celebrated: Viva La Fiesta
Santa Fe is 400 years old this year. It has reason to celebrate! There are few American cities that can claim so long a presence. And it appears to be a city that embraces all influences of its history and culture. The center of life is the main Plaza. Facing the Plaza is the Cathedral, hotels, luxury-item boutiques, the Palace of the Governors which is the oldest continuously used public building in the US, and most importantly to the 4 of us hungry fiesta-goers, the Plaza Diner. Santa Fe is known for many wonderful restaurants, often with as many $$$$ on their menu as little red chiles. But the Plaza Diner is perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner; we tried it for each. Red or Green – the leading question at every meal. Did you know they can put chile in pancakes? My taste buds rebelled at even the idea of green chile pancakes – what would they flavor the syrup with? Chipotle? I settled instead for blue corn and pinons on pancakes…mmmm.
But it was so crowded in town. I definitely appreciate the absence of traffic in Silver City. Remembering what traffic is like and maneuvering in traffic when you don’t know the town are two different things. Our hotel was just off the Plaza, so very much in the heart of congestion. When we arrived on Thursday and it took 15 minutes to go around a small block to get to the hotel’s parking area, I’m afraid I was ready to leave the “big city” right then. Fortunately, downtown Santa Fe is a very walkable city—and we did. Didn’t use a car except to go out to the edge of town and when we went up into the mountains.
So here were the highlights: wonderful music that had me dancing in the street; dancing that was fun to watch as the girls and women tossed and fanned their full, ruffled skirts; a 2 ½ mile walk at 9,500 feet through aspen and pine forests, where the 4 of us had the trail largely to ourselves; and time spent with our nephew and his wife. I had so much fun, I forgot to take many pictures. But what I took, you’ll find here.
And you can’t leave Fiesta weekend without Zozobra’s rendition of “I’m on Fire”
The Old Town celebrated: Viva La Fiesta
Santa Fe is 400 years old this year. It has reason to celebrate! There are few American cities that can claim so long a presence. And it appears to be a city that embraces all influences of its history and culture. The center of life is the main Plaza. Facing the Plaza is the Cathedral, hotels, luxury-item boutiques, the Palace of the Governors which is the oldest continuously used public building in the US, and most importantly to the 4 of us hungry fiesta-goers, the Plaza Diner. Santa Fe is known for many wonderful restaurants, often with as many $$$$ on their menu as little red chiles. But the Plaza Diner is perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner; we tried it for each. Red or Green – the leading question at every meal. Did you know they can put chile in pancakes? My taste buds rebelled at even the idea of green chile pancakes – what would they flavor the syrup with? Chipotle? I settled instead for blue corn and pinons on pancakes…mmmm.
But it was so crowded in town. I definitely appreciate the absence of traffic in Silver City. Remembering what traffic is like and maneuvering in traffic when you don’t know the town are two different things. Our hotel was just off the Plaza, so very much in the heart of congestion. When we arrived on Thursday and it took 15 minutes to go around a small block to get to the hotel’s parking area, I’m afraid I was ready to leave the “big city” right then. Fortunately, downtown Santa Fe is a very walkable city—and we did. Didn’t use a car except to go out to the edge of town and when we went up into the mountains.
So here were the highlights: wonderful music that had me dancing in the street; dancing that was fun to watch as the girls and women tossed and fanned their full, ruffled skirts; a 2 ½ mile walk at 9,500 feet through aspen and pine forests, where the 4 of us had the trail largely to ourselves; and time spent with our nephew and his wife. I had so much fun, I forgot to take many pictures. But what I took, you’ll find here.
And you can’t leave Fiesta weekend without Zozobra’s rendition of “I’m on Fire”
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Southwest Perfume
If you know anything about the Southwest, especially New Mexico, you know I’m talking chiles. Red or Green is the state’s motto. I have, as told before, started experimenting with red and green chile: powdered red…dried green. I was given some ground deep red chile by a friend from last year’s crop; she said that when this year’s bounty came in to throw that “old stuff” away. Later, I bought some ground red of a lighter color, but hotter taste, at the farmer’s market and a bag of dried green pods.
Now, though…now it’s chile harvest time. That means the perfume of roasting green chiles pervades the streets and squares of New Mexico towns anywhere within hailing distance of a chile patch, including Silver City. My first acquaintance with roasting green chiles was at the Silver City Co-op, a full roaster turning on the street corner, while boxes of fresh pods waited their turn to the flames. I had my choice – green mild or green hot. Since I’m wading into this gastronomic pool slowly, I opted for mild. Went inside and found a bag of about 2 ½ lbs for 79 cents/lb. I froze two small boxes and kept a third in the fridge. Figured I was good for awhile. And so I was. Until Nick went to Albuquerque for a couple of days and stopped in Hatch, NM on his way home. Hatch is the epicenter of chile – for the world, to hear them tell it. And harvest is the time the Hatch farmers shine. I would have loved to be with Nick as he went from store to roadside stand to truck tailgate. He brought home 3 types of ground chile: 2 different reds and, unusually, ground green chile. But most aromatically, he brought home ½ bag of freshly roasted green. In Hatch, a half bag is the smallest they will sell. A half bag weighs over 10 pounds!! From my office, I could smell the chile before the garage door was down behind the car. I could smell them before he got them out of the car. And boy, I could smell them the moment he opened the door from the garage to the house. We spent the next 3 hours laying out still-hot green chile pods on cookie sheets and putting them in the freezer. Well – I spent 3 hours doing that. Nick spent 3 hours stripping the roasted skins off and piling up a store to make soup the next day. And for every pod he stripped and put in the bowl, he stripped a pod and popped it in his mouth. I grew up around summer berry crops – one blackberry in the bowl and one in the mouth – till my mouth was stained. I would never have dreamed of eating chile pods the same way!
The perfume! I don’t know how to describe it. Definitely not bell peppers; intense; slightly burnt; very slightly sweet; like nothing I’ve smelled before. The house still smelled for a day afterwards; we even slept with green chile staining the air currents in the bedroom. Now that the smell of the roasted green chiles no longer lingers in the kitchen, I’ve noticed another perfume. More subtle, but pungent. Earthy; warm; spicy; makes me sneeze if I stand near over-long. The 3 bags of ground chile he brought still sit on the counter. I tracked the source to those bags. Aware now, I smell the earthiness and spice every time I go into the kitchen and find myself leaning over the bags to gather in more. Now I understand why Skee said to throw out the “old stuff.” By taste and by aroma, there is no comparison between last season’s and the new season’s harvests. But it’s rather hard to tell for sure. Last night I tried to do some taste testing to differentiate between this one and that, this year’s and last, and to start thinking how to use each. Just a touch of a damp finger tip transferring a slight dusting of red fire from bag to tongue. The first time, I got flavor with the fire. But you know the saying: “a slow burn.” After 3 such tips, I could only tell hot from hotter. I guess the distinctions and preferences will come on the basis of marriage to chicken, fish, vegetables etc.
I am also now the proud owner of 5 chile cookbooks. One is an old classic – one of those that you can tell the favorite recipes because the pages are stained. Two I picked up at the Albuquerque airport my last trip through. One a present for Nick’s birthday. And finally, the Hatch Chile Festival Official Cookbook, with the winning recipes for red and green for the last 5 years. Great reading and great ideas for my own experiments.
This is fun. Learning and trying – stretching my palette beyond its regional biases. And here’s what I find truly interesting, now that my lingo includes ‘red or green’: the DC region has a world-encompassing restaurant scene. Within a few blocks in Bethesda, there are 200 restaurants, representing foods from most regions and countries of the world. But except for one restaurant I remember at the corner of K and 19th Streets, NW which specialized in rattlesnake, I don’t know of one true Southwestern – not TexMex – but Mexican-Indian-Spanish-ranch-influenced eatery. So – Chicken grilled with green-chile chutney and lime, anyone?
Now, though…now it’s chile harvest time. That means the perfume of roasting green chiles pervades the streets and squares of New Mexico towns anywhere within hailing distance of a chile patch, including Silver City. My first acquaintance with roasting green chiles was at the Silver City Co-op, a full roaster turning on the street corner, while boxes of fresh pods waited their turn to the flames. I had my choice – green mild or green hot. Since I’m wading into this gastronomic pool slowly, I opted for mild. Went inside and found a bag of about 2 ½ lbs for 79 cents/lb. I froze two small boxes and kept a third in the fridge. Figured I was good for awhile. And so I was. Until Nick went to Albuquerque for a couple of days and stopped in Hatch, NM on his way home. Hatch is the epicenter of chile – for the world, to hear them tell it. And harvest is the time the Hatch farmers shine. I would have loved to be with Nick as he went from store to roadside stand to truck tailgate. He brought home 3 types of ground chile: 2 different reds and, unusually, ground green chile. But most aromatically, he brought home ½ bag of freshly roasted green. In Hatch, a half bag is the smallest they will sell. A half bag weighs over 10 pounds!! From my office, I could smell the chile before the garage door was down behind the car. I could smell them before he got them out of the car. And boy, I could smell them the moment he opened the door from the garage to the house. We spent the next 3 hours laying out still-hot green chile pods on cookie sheets and putting them in the freezer. Well – I spent 3 hours doing that. Nick spent 3 hours stripping the roasted skins off and piling up a store to make soup the next day. And for every pod he stripped and put in the bowl, he stripped a pod and popped it in his mouth. I grew up around summer berry crops – one blackberry in the bowl and one in the mouth – till my mouth was stained. I would never have dreamed of eating chile pods the same way!
The perfume! I don’t know how to describe it. Definitely not bell peppers; intense; slightly burnt; very slightly sweet; like nothing I’ve smelled before. The house still smelled for a day afterwards; we even slept with green chile staining the air currents in the bedroom. Now that the smell of the roasted green chiles no longer lingers in the kitchen, I’ve noticed another perfume. More subtle, but pungent. Earthy; warm; spicy; makes me sneeze if I stand near over-long. The 3 bags of ground chile he brought still sit on the counter. I tracked the source to those bags. Aware now, I smell the earthiness and spice every time I go into the kitchen and find myself leaning over the bags to gather in more. Now I understand why Skee said to throw out the “old stuff.” By taste and by aroma, there is no comparison between last season’s and the new season’s harvests. But it’s rather hard to tell for sure. Last night I tried to do some taste testing to differentiate between this one and that, this year’s and last, and to start thinking how to use each. Just a touch of a damp finger tip transferring a slight dusting of red fire from bag to tongue. The first time, I got flavor with the fire. But you know the saying: “a slow burn.” After 3 such tips, I could only tell hot from hotter. I guess the distinctions and preferences will come on the basis of marriage to chicken, fish, vegetables etc.
I am also now the proud owner of 5 chile cookbooks. One is an old classic – one of those that you can tell the favorite recipes because the pages are stained. Two I picked up at the Albuquerque airport my last trip through. One a present for Nick’s birthday. And finally, the Hatch Chile Festival Official Cookbook, with the winning recipes for red and green for the last 5 years. Great reading and great ideas for my own experiments.
This is fun. Learning and trying – stretching my palette beyond its regional biases. And here’s what I find truly interesting, now that my lingo includes ‘red or green’: the DC region has a world-encompassing restaurant scene. Within a few blocks in Bethesda, there are 200 restaurants, representing foods from most regions and countries of the world. But except for one restaurant I remember at the corner of K and 19th Streets, NW which specialized in rattlesnake, I don’t know of one true Southwestern – not TexMex – but Mexican-Indian-Spanish-ranch-influenced eatery. So – Chicken grilled with green-chile chutney and lime, anyone?
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