The chile near-disaster

A month or two ago I ordered local organic green chile, which was scheduled to ship “toward the end of the summer” and they’d send an email when it was shipping. But I don’t think I always get all my emails. Or maybe they didn’t send one. At any rate, unbeknownst to us, they shipped at the end of last week. According to the tracking number that I later found on the package, our box of fresh, raw, green chiles were put into one of those metal parcel boxes on our street at approximately noon on Friday.

Unfortunately, we had left for the holiday weekend at about 10 AM on Friday. We had a lovely time in the Gila Mountains (pronounced hee-la). On Monday afternoon, on our way back from the Gila, John had me drop him off at work (yeah it’s just nuts, he works a lot of overtime). By the time I checked the mail that evening, and discovered the chiles, they had been cooking in the mail boxes the 90 degree heat for 4 days.

Amazingly, they were still pretty much ok. I only had to throw a few out.

I called John at work and he decided to come home and help me roast them that very moment, because he was leaving at 5 AM the next morning to spend the rest of the week in California. Here we are, peeling freshly roasted chiles on Monday night.

In the photo below, the bowl on the top left is the freshly roasted chiles, the one on the right is the peeled chiles, and the small one on the bottom is the skins I’ve peeled off. We leave the stems on and seeds in (I don’t know why – tradition?) Chile rellenos are served with the stem intact. Although most of these I will chop before freezing, because most of the time we use them like other people use chopped onions: in soups, stews, eggs, rice, etc.

The lengths New Mexican’s go for their chiles!

(Why does he have sunglasses on his head? I don’t know. Because it’s dark out? Because there’s nothing else on his head?)