I spend some mornings at a wonderful coffee shop telling stories. Most of the stories might be true. It is lovely to drink coffee and laugh with friends. Without water we wouldn’t have coffee nor green chile. I love the Rio Grande. Today’s podcast has a little of this and that stories. When you hear people talking about how the West was won, it was not with guns, though they were important. Rather, it was very precise technology that tamed the West, and that technology is still in use. For hundreds of years the vast wild lands of New Mexico had plenty of lizards, snakes, deer, rabbits and coyotes but nothing that could be shipped somewhere else for money. What could use the land commercially were cattle and sheep. Then came two inventions: windmills and barbed wire. Oh, yes, and railroads so when going to market the cows didn’t walk off their pounds or take twenty cowboys a month to get there. What made the difference in ranching was only a hundred or so feet of dirt away from the thirsty cows, sheep and people. That first great invention was windmills.

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I am told that an Iceberg is 10 percent visible and 90 percent below the water line. Las Cruces hasn’t seen an Iceberg in forever, except in Hollywood movies. What is the commonality of Icebergs and Las Cruces and most towns in New Mexico? What you see, the roads, buildings and houses are only a part of the entire story of building Las Cruces. When I was a little boy, my grandfather’s ranch south of Carrizozo, NM was what would be considered primitive because it had kerosene lanterns for light and a wood stove for cooking and heat. Water was pumped by a windmill on a hill and put in a tank to gravity flow into the house. There wasn’t electricity other than batteries for the radio and no propane, yet. It was 30 bumpy miles on dirt roads to the nearest paved road in Tularosa. When we hit the pavement, everyone would say, ah! I was very lucky to experience cleaning the lantern chimneys every Saturday and reading by kerosene light while listening to a radio powered by batteries. That was 1954 and the Rural Electrification Act finally came to the ranch, and they had electricity for the house and the water wells.

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I had an interesting question from someone: “Why is everyone so taken by chile?” Most of us were born here in New Mexico and do not remember a time when we were not eating chile peppers. Yes, we had baby food, but then came green and red chile. We loved it. Let’s explore why people here and all over the world find New Mexico chile so very great. And it is great. There are facts about New Mexico chile to think about: for people coming to New Mexico, it is a taste that some visitors and residents embrace enthusiastically, while others do not. Why is that, Michael? Chile Peppers are unlike other edibles; they take getting used to early on in your adventure in a novel taste. The enjoyment of chile peppers works out over time if you have a satisfied expression after a meal using chile peppers, what we call the chile afterglow. Now we are talking chile with an e, not chili with an i in Texas or winter chilly with a y.

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When you see a new chile pepper salsa at the Fresh Chile Company, you know this didn’t happen by accident. It took lots of work and innovation to invent, yes, invent a new salsa. Well now there is a new one and I will tell you about what it took to create Randy’s Salsa. Fresh Chile Company owner Randy McMillan wanted to have a salsa with larger chunks and wanted to use a chile pepper variety, Matador, that is loved by chile fans. The development team started the inventing process. It started with the chile: Matador, the chopping was one-inch squares. If it was just chile they could stop there but they wanted a big chunk salsa, so they combined Green and Red Matador, juicy tomatoes, crisp onions, a hint of lemon juice to adjust acidity and added a unique taste, some water, garlic, a vegan chicken-type base and get this a touch of black pepper for an extra kick. How did all of these delicious items get into the mix? It is all here.

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It was with sadness that I learned on Wednesday that former NMSU, St. Louis Cardinals and Denver Bronco quarterback Charley Johnson has passed at age 85. It wasn’t his intention to leave Texas and come to New Mexico. A couple things happened. He was raised in Big Spring, Texas. A super athlete in high school, he intended to play football in college. One problem: he got a football scholarship to Schreiner Institute which is now Schreiner University. But the year that Charley Johnson arrived at college, the football program where he intended to play football was cancelled. Charley Johnson was determined to play collegiate sports, so he checked around and through several coaches we was able to find Presley Askew, the basketball coach in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He transferred to the College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts and started taking courses in Chemical Engineering. While a student, the college changed its name to New Mexico State University. One major problem he couldn’t fix was that the football coach, Warren Woodson didn’t have a football scholarship to give him. Charley and his family didn’t have the money for him to just attend but he was able to get a scholarship for Aggie Basketball and an odd thing happened to him.

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In New Mexico we have what I’m going to call the New Mexico grown chile pepper plant. It’s central to our identity. We go to restaurants for their chips and salsa. The question: red or green is answered in New Mexico as both, in a blend, The official smell of New Mexico is roasting green chile. We have many chile peppers. There’s secrets of New Mexico chile.

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This weekend is the 52nd annual Hatch Chile Festival in Hatch, New Mexico the Chile Capital of the world. Saturday and Sunday, August 31 and September 1st the small Southern New Mexico town will be brimming with good food, good people and good times. Learn about chile pepper tastes and different ways that the chile can be prepared. Be prepared for fun and YUM. But as you enjoy the ambrosia of chile this weekend be certain that we could put names on these great 2024 chile peppers. If we are talking chile pepper related names, who is first? That would be Fabián García. Even though he passed in 1948, two years before I was born, I think of him often, usually with a mouthful of delicious Hatch Valley Green or Red Chile. Fabián García is often given the title, The founder of New Mexico Commercial Food Production. While we think of him often for his work on Chiles Peppers,

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With some New Mexico towns and cities only the name is needed, not having to say, New Mexico. Example: Albuquerque, where there is no need for New Mexico. But some, like Las Vegas, need New Mexico or some people will make a 700-mile geographical error and an even worse cultural assumption. And Las Vegas, New Mexico was a booming town long before the first building was built in Nevada. Let's talk about New Mexico towns.

Love this Podcast? Check out our website at The Fresh Chile Company. Also, check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube! Follow this link to get 15% off of your next order: Podcast15