For Miglet, per an earlier conversation, a passage from William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1983), published around the time I mirrored portions of his trip with my own great adventure:
"She served a stack of unheated flour tortillas, butter, and a bowl of green, watery fire that would have put a light in the eyes of Quetzalcoatl. Texans can talk, but nowhere is there an American chile hot sauce, green or red, like the New Mexican versions. . .I'd finished the tortillas when she set down huevos rancheros with chopped nopales (prickly pear), rice, and a gringo glass of milk to extinguish the combustibles. Solid cafe food without pretense. Maybe the time is coming, but as yet the great variety and subtlety of fine Mexican cuisine have not much reached the United States. Ten thousand taco stands peddle concoctions cooked by some guy who pronounces the l's in tortilla, and, in the Southwest, cafes like the Manhattan serve a good but basic fare; yet, only a few places turn out the dishes that put a cocinero in a class with the chef: squash blossom enchilada, chicken in green pumpkin-seed sauce, tortilla soup, drunken octopus, sweet tamales, shrimp marinated in jalapenos, lime soup, chicken breast pudding, chicken-in-a-shirt."
Hey: Drunken Octopus. Good band name?
Drunken Octopus is an apt description for this friend of mine who likes to grope me in movie theaters.
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to visit New Mexico and the above passage has intensified that desire.
Thank you, Jim :D
Miglet, do go! I agree that the green chiles from Hatch compare to no others, and the "Southern Hospitality" of the west is a wonderful things to experience. My godparents built their own adobe home there in the desert, and it is one of my favorite places in the world. New Mexico truly is the Land of Enchantment. Hope you get there soon, safe travels to you!
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