Why We Moved to New Mexico - Reason #2

[Editor's Note:  As with the previous post, this is not really a Cutler Park story, nor are the images from Cutler Park.  I simply haven't started a new blog for my New Mexico images and stories yet, so this is my only channel/venue.]


At the end of the summer out here in New Mexico, the harvest of green chile peppers comes in, primarily from Hatch, New Mexico, along the Rio Grande in the southern part of the state (about 200 miles south of where we are).

Besides buying them individually . . .

you can buy them by the box . . .
 

or you can buy them by the bag (30 lbs.) . . .

 

And after you buy them, you get them roasted.  Whether it's a large amount or small, you take your peppers out to the parking lot of the grocery store 

and give them to the guy who will dump them in a big propane-fueled hopper.  

It takes about 3-4 minutes, 

and when they come out the skins are scorched.

Then you take them home, peel the skins, take out the seeds, 

slice the peppers, and put them in freezer bags for storage.

 

Last weekend we bought two 30-lb. bags -- one bag of "hot" and one bag of "medium hot."  (What were we thinking?!?)

It took us about 7 and a half hours to process all of them -- well, almost all; I gave up at 10:30pm!  But now we have about 20 lbs. of chiles in the freezer, ready to sustain us in stews and other tasty dishes we'll cook through the winter.

 And we'll enjoy it even more because we cleaned and cored and sliced every one of those  #!%$* peppers!