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Entries in Deming (2)

Friday
Mar112011

Blue Highways: Deming, New Mexico

 

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe cross another border into New Mexico with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and discover why New Mexico chile is a force to be reckoned with.  Let's stop a moment and savor the delicious heat.  Click on the thumbnail of the map at right to see where Deming, the town that where we pass some time, is located.

Book Quote

"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, with no two recipes the same except for the pyrotechnical display they blow off under the nose.  New Mexican salsas are mouth-watering, eye-watering, nose-watering; they clean the pipes, ducts, tracts, tubes; and like spider venom, they can turn innards to liquid."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 10

Downtown Deming, New Mexico. Photo by Kristine and at her blog Adventures in Life. Click on photo to go to host page.

Deming, New Mexico

Every year, in Albuquerque where I live, there is a National Fiery Foods Show.  In a large casino convention hall, the room is packed with booths where vendors show off their latest chile sauces, barbecue sauces, salsas, chile powders, and other hot and spicy confections.  Did you know that there is chile ice cream?  How about chile-spiced chocolates, or even better, chile spiced chocolates wrapped around bacon.  The newest technologies and techniques for harvesting chile is on display, and at the last one, I got to sample the latest of the hottest chiles ever grown, the bhut jolokia chile cultivated in India.  I had a sample of a sauce made with a little of that chile, and it was extremely mouth burning.  One goes to the Fiery Foods Show with an iron stomach and, if one needs it, a lot of antacid.

In southern New Mexico, chile is king.  The area around Hatch, New Mexico is prime chile growing country, but even backyard gardners around the state try their hands at making their own chiles.  One thing I love about New Mexico is the fall, when suddenly the air is filled with the smell of roasting green chile.  At our local farmers market, we can often buy fresh chile from an organic farmer, take it over to a guy with a portable chile roaster, and have it roasted right there in front of us in about 10 minutes.

If given a choice, I usually prefer green chile over red.  They are really the same plant - the red chile is really green chile left on the vine a little longer.  But I like the taste of a good medium to hot green chile.  You can still taste the flavor with the hotness built in.  My wife likes mild to medium green chile.  At a local restaurant in Albuquerque, the Frontier, she will often order her meal with chopped green chile on the side so that she can mix in the spiciness to her own comfort.  However, I love a good carne adovada, which is shredded or diced pork slow cooked in a red chile sauce.  I also love posole - a really good posole can make you weep in happiness - which is hominy and beef or pork in a red chile broth.

New Mexico chile is important to the state.  It is one of the things that gives New Mexico its identity.  New Mexicans are very quick to take some umbrage if it is spelled wrong.  Often you see, in other states, the spelling of "chili."  Chili actually refers to a type of stew.  In New Mexico, it is always "chile."  Chiles are used for food and also for decoration.  Many houses hang ristras - tied-together bundles of red chile that serve as outside decorations, mostly on adobe houses to give them an extra air of authenticity.

I tried to grow chile once.  I put in a couple of small plants and got a couple of small chiles out of them.  I felt a little proud that I, too, was able to participate in something that is so much a part of this culture that I find myself living in, even if only in a small way.

I've never been to Deming, though I've been in the area, but I can imagine that what LHM describes in the restaurant he visited still holds true today.  One gets Tex-Mex in Texas, but one gets a unique, regional cuisine that is completely different in New Mexico.  And always, one is asked the ubiquitous question:  red or green with that?  Most people line up on one side or the other - a few like both.  Regardless, it's a cultural and gastronomic identifier that gives New Mexico a uniqueness as real as anywhere else.

Musical Interlude

In the spirit of food, the musical interlude for this post is by Boston group Sol y Canto, driven by the voice of Puerto Rican and Argentine singer Rosi Amador and the guitar of her husband, New Mexico's Brian Amador.  In any Latin culture, cuisine is king.  The song encourages us to forgo fast food and join the sumptuous feast of Latin home-cooking.  Salud, and enjoy!

 

If you want to know more about Deming

Bataan Death March Memorial
City of Deming
The Deming Headlight (newspaper)
Great American Duck Race
Wikipedia: Deming

Next up: Hachita, New Mexico

Wednesday
Mar022011

Blue Highways: El Paso, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) doesn't want to stop in El Paso, but we will and take a look around.  While there, we'll see some murals, eat some Tex-Mex, view some art and listen to some music.  Where is El Paso on our journey?  Click on the thumbnail to your right to find out.

Book Quote

"El Paso was a pleasant city, but I felt I'd been in Texas for weeks, so I drove on west through the natural break in the Rockies that gives the town its name - the very pass Indians, conquistadors, and the Butterfield Stage used - drove around crumbling Comanche Peak, and headed up the Rio Grande."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 9

 

Kress Building in downtown El Paso. Photo by Michael L. Hess.

El Paso, Texas

LHM pretty much bypasses El Paso, which is unfortunate.  I know that larger cities aren't really what he's interested in, but El Paso is more interesting than you might think.  At the time that I write, El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States.  This is pretty amazing, considering that just across the Rio Grande in Mexico, Ciudad Juarez had over 3000 murders in 2010.  In fact, El Paso is safe enough that the former mayor of Ciudad Juarez ran the city from El Paso, where he lived.  I guess being under death threats every day would make anyone want to stay away from one of the most dangerous cities in the world and be in one of the safest in the world, even if you are the former's top elected official.

But El Paso seems to me to be pretty vibrant.  It is a city of murals, as I found when I visited there prior to a camping trip in the Guadalupe Mountains.  Everywhere around the city, local artists paint the issues that the community deals with - illegal immigration, HIV/AIDS - as well as the hopes of the residents.

El Paso Lacrimas mural. Photo by Michael L. HessLuis Jimenez, a nationally famous sculptor from El Paso who died while working on sculptures for the Denver Airport, has a piece in El Paso celebrating a couple of its more famous past residents - a pair of alligators that lived in a small zoo there.  They were an oddity in this western arid part of the country, and so the alligators were quite an attraction for the city, and now they are immortalized in fiberglass sculpture in El Paso's downtown.

Luis Jimenez' alligator sculpture in El Paso. Photo by Michael L. HessEl Paso also still maintains its very western feel, while at the same time being a vibrant crossroads of two cultures.  Walking the streets, one looks at the buildings and can imagine what the town looked like at the turn of the century when many of the buildings were erected.  Men in suits mingling with ladies in finery, but also cowboys just in from the dusty range, Indians selling their artistic creations, and Mexicans engaging in commerce and plying their trades.  One can just imagine the Marty Robbins song...

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl.
Night-time would find me in Rosa's cantina;
Music would play and Felina would whirl.

Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina,

Wicked and evil while casting a spell.
My love was deep for this Mexican maiden;
I was in love but in vain, I could tell.

Of course, some of the best Mexican food can be found there.  After living in San Antonio and enjoying our Tex-Mex, and then living in Albuquerque where the New Mexican food, smothered with red or green chile, is very different, we missed having good Tex-Mex food.  We were delighted to find it again in El Paso.

El Paso was also the catalyst for one of sports most defining moments, and a milestone for racial equality in the NCAA.  Legendary coach Don Haskins of Texas Western University, now the University of Texas at El Paso, fielded a basketball team of five African-American starters in the national championship game against a decidedly all-white Kentucky squad.  Texas Western's win in that game and its national championship is credited with helping desegregate college basketball squads all over the South.

I live three and one half hours away from El Paso now.  I would think twice about crossing the border into Ciudad Juarez, but I wouldn't hesitate visiting El Paso again.

Musical Interlude

The Marty Robbins tune is famous, but I thought I'd present you with a band that I actually saw and which you might not know about.  The Gourds, out of Austin, titled one of their songs El Paso.  It's got a nice beat.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about El Paso

Chamizol National Memorial
El Chuco (Street photography of El Paso)
El Paso Convention and Visitors Bureau
El Paso Daily Photo (blog)
El Paso Times (newspaper)
Hueco Tanks State Park
Road Food America: H&H Cafe & Car Wash
Road Food America: Smitty's
University of Texas at El Paso
US Border Patrol Museum
Wikipedia: El Paso
World's Largest Man-Made Illuminated Star

Next up: Deming, New Mexico