Great Publications | WESTPHALIA PUBLISHING

12/13 Draft

It was a time for transition in a land in transition.

Charlotte would adjust.

There was a 1980 silver gray Ford Ranger pickup in Charlotte’s driveway. There once had also been a blue Honda, missing since the day her husband, Fred, had gone to the carwash and never returned.

That was in the early evening, right after a dinner of fish tacos with a special sauce of Anaheims and jalapeños, tomatoes and red onions. Fred had left most uneaten on his plate, a tendency Charlotte had been noticing was occurring with greater frequency of late.

When he did not return that evening, Charlotte fell asleep on the sofa and awoke the next morning with an appetite for chorizo and eggs, which she began to prepare after starting the coffee.

She went to the bedroom to awaken Fred. She thought he was sleeping later than usual. But Fred was not there.

Since she had not made the bed the day before, in fact, had not made the bed for several days, it did not occur to her that he had not been in it. She looked out the living room window at the driveway, but upon noticing the missing Honda, merely assumed that Fred had risen early and gone to work at the “What’s Your Sign?” sign shop, where he had made point-of-purchase signs for fifteen years. Some orders had to be filled on short notice. She thought it was considerate of him to not awaken her after he had returned from the carwash or left for work in the morning.

Charlotte was expecting a pleasant day. She had dreamed the pleasant dream again of sailing in a green boat on a green sea, clipping along with the wind, not feeling it on her back as it pushed her effortlessly, as it had in her childhood when she sailed with her father on Chesapeake Bay.

Charlotte’s father was a major in the Army, but he loved sailing, and took every opportunity to take out his sloop, even when they were posted to places where it was difficult to find open water. Her mother rarely joined them because she didn’t enjoy being on the water. She played bridge with other wives of commissioned officers, organized cocktail parties on a rotating basis, and cooked. She never missed an opportunity to try new dishes, but if her husband didn’t enjoy it, she knew that she wouldn’t prepare that again. Like so many men, he was a meat and potatoes man, bacon and/or sausage and eggs for breakfast, apple pie for dessert. Even after being warned by his doctor, he continued his usual diet, confident that when he returned home at the end of day, the smell of steak with onions and mushrooms would greet him in the foyer. Charlotte asked her mother if they could have quiche sometime. “Maybe for lunch or when the ladies are over, but your father wouldn’t like that at all, but we can have spaghetti or macaroni and cheese.”

Charlotte was well trained in cooking the things her father liked, so when she married Fred, who also was a meat and potatoes man, she knew just what to do, although she added some vegetables on the side. Peas were okay with Fred, but broccoli he wouldn’t touch. She managed to slip in green salads, which Fred slathered with blue cheese dressing.

Fred was a sergeant in the army. He had been assigned to a research and development unit at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico and, like many other discharged or retired military people, he had wanted to remain in sunny New Mexico with its mild winters, scenic views, and easy-going way of life. The El Paso Times kept a record of consecutive days when the sun was shining, and it was well over 200 already that year. Cheap developments of cinder block houses with fancy street names like Calle de Sueños were going up fast on the east side of town to accommodate all the people the government brought to the area to work on rockets and missiles.

People who had lived downtown in adobe houses on the street which had once been the Camino Real, the King’s Highway, shook their heads and started to think about their property taxes going up. Four hundred years ago settlers from Mexico had pushed their herds and households up that same trail to El Norte, and some families had lived in those houses for generations.

A few years earlier, on the other side of the mountain and further north, the first atomic bomb had lit up the sky, announcing the many changes to come to the land of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Now, people in villages up and down the Rio Grande were getting used to seeing vapor trails from Nike and other missiles lifting off on the other side of the mountain. Fred and Charlotte used to drive up Organ Pass to get a good look at the launches in the test area of the Tularosa Basin, which once had been a privately owned ranch. At first, it was the German V2 rockets that blasted off, but after Sputnik, it was all about putting capsules in orbit.

Charlotte missed Chesapeake Bay and the green Eastern coast where she had grown up, but she had adjusted to her new life in the arid high desert conditions, the all-day-long sunshine, the hearing of residents speaking a foreign language. Charlotte had taken French in high school, but she didn’t seem to hear any cognates in Spanish, which was, after all, spoken in the local dialect.

After Fred got a job at the sign shop, Charlotte got a job as a clerk at the State University in the Agriculture School. In time, she was moved over to the chile research department, where she had learned about all the varieties of chiles that were gradually becoming an economic staple in the county. When she had first come to the area she was wary about Mexican food and always asked which was the least spicy if she ate out at Mexican restaurants, which Fred sometimes liked to do. The waitresses usually told her that the green sauces were the least spicy, so she always ordered something with green chile rather than the dreaded red with its threatening dried blood color and musky scent.

At the college, however, Charlotte observed that some chiles were being bred to be milder as well as spicier. Although chiles had been a part of the Native American diet, along with corn, beans and squash, farmers in the Rio Grande Valley had been experimenting with hybrid varieties, and the state university had picked up the research. Professor Muldoon was an expert in capsaicin and explained how there was a chart that detailed how spicy each one was. Some had a heat index in the thousands --in fact, some of the smallest ones ---while others were low and appealed to the taste of other newcomers to the valley, the snowbirds and retired people who were settling in the valley in increasing numbers. “They’re really very healthy,” Professor Muldoon said, “full of vitamin C, and you might enjoy them. Try the Big Jim variety next time you go out to the store and make some chiles rellenos. They’re real easy to cook, too.”

Charlotte was up to the challenge, so the very next time she went to the market she picked up a half dozen long and slender chile pods. She had a lot of experience with bell peppers, stuffing them with ground beef and bread crumbs and cutting them up for salads, so how hard could it be to cook these.

Armed with a recipe for green chile stew from the lab, she sliced open the pods and took out the seeds, then chopped them up into bite-sized pieces. After a few minutes she began to feel a little heat in her fingers. “Oh, dear,” she thought, “what are these going to do to my stomach.”

The stew bubbled away and smelled delicious, but when she took out a sample, working up the courage to try that first bite, it was like eating cellulose. Fortunately, she had hamburger in the freezer, and there was enough time for thawing it before dinner.

The next day it was back to the market for Charlotte. Another packet of stew meat, a bag of onions, some other items, and finally, another half dozen green chile pods.

“Good morning,” the check-out clerk greeted Char-lotte. “Is that all for you today?”

“Yes, going to try again. I made a mess out of my first attempt at a beef-chile stew.” Charlotte noted the clerk’s name tag, Navidad.

The clerk looked at the address on the check Char-lotte had written. You don’t live very far from me,” she said, “I live on Calle de los Ángeles.” Navidad had never heard of anyone making a mess with green chiles before, and she detected that Charlotte was not used to cooking with them.

“I’m Navidad Rodríguez,” she said, offering her hand, which Charlotte warmly grasped.

“You know, I get off at noon. I could come over and give you some tips on how to cook chiles, if you like.”

“Well, if it’s not too much trouble, I could use some help,” Charlotte said, not employing her normal and automatic first rejections of offers like this from total strangers, even if she longed for human contact.

“I’ll come over about one-thirty, okay?”

Navidad’s family was one of those who had lived in the valley for generations. She had photos of her great-grandparents sitting stiffly in posed portraits from the nineteenth century. They had built a two-story adobe house in the then current architectural style called Territorial, with pitched roof and lintels above the windows and a two-story front porch. She could trace her mother’s family through several generations, including some Native Americans, maybe some as far back as 1680 when those Puebloans who had been friendly or servants to the Spanish settlers had fled from the Pueblo Insurrection up north, came south Rio Grande.

Not much remained of that once mighty drainage system with its swamps and wetlands after the 1935 water rights legislation brought dams to provide irrigation for farmers on its banks. Manso Indians had once eked out a living here in what was now a desert trickle for most of the year. You could walk across its dry bed most of the winter.

If it seemed like a lot of changes had been occurring lately, you just had to reflect on the past—conquistadores, padres, settlers speaking with the Hapsburg lisp, the insurrection, De Soto and the Reconquista, even a few Civil War skirmishes, Indian raids, outlaws, railroads—all seemed to be in a constant state of flux, while, at the same time, there was a timeless quality, perhaps suggested by the mountains that overlooked the valley on the east and the flat, high tableland to the west

Navidad’s father, Ernesto, had a shop on a side street downtown that had been a stable and was now a small engine repair business run by one of her brothers. Ernesto had run for public office, had been sheriff, then mayor, and was now a city councilman.

Her mother was traditional, employed a maid, and once her children had grown, she travelled. Navidad’s maternal grandmother was very grand and ruled over her matriarchy with an iron hand. She had lost two boys in wars and wore black the rest of her life.

Navidad was at the door at one-thirty. She looked at the remains of Charlotte’s first attempt. “You know what?” she said, “these chiles have tough skins. First you have to roast them on the gas burner flame until they turn black, then stuff them inside zip-lock bags to sweat. Then the skin comes right off. Of course, you should wear latex gloves and take all the seeds out and cut off any stringy parts.”

While the chiles were sweating, she showed Charlotte how to make flan, that creamy egg custard pudding swimming in its delicious piloncillo bath. While the two women cooked, they talked about food they liked. Charlotte told Navidad how she loved seafood, which Fred hated, but dishes like coquilles St. Jacques, various shrimp dishes and even squid in its own ink. Navidad told Charlotte about mole and how that had been invented by Mexican nuns in an emergency to feed a visiting bishop, using ground pumpkin seeds and chocolate as a base with various peppers. They commented at how much the world owed the Americas for foods that everyone took for granted—potatoes, tomatoes, maize, chocolate—the list went on and on.

Then they talked about their own lives, anecdotes that revealed particularities of their own heritages, their girlhoods and marriages, each recognizing something from the other. They opened bottles of wine and laughed at their foibles and their husbands’ peculiarities, in sometimes daily or biweekly sessions that went on until one of them had to leave to make dinner at home.

Navidad talked about all the varieties of chiles—Anaheim, Big Jim, poblanos, habaneros, anchos, jalapeños—how a day without capsaicin was like a day without sunshine. She raised peppers early in her own garden, but she eagerly looked forward to the end of summer and the harvest, the chile festivals and roadside stands up and down the Rio Grande.

They both liked the displays of ristras, those chiles pods braided together hanging on the walls and Portales of casas to dry in the autumn sun, green at first, then turning red as the season progressed. Navidad always made ristras, so she showed Charlotte how to tie the stems together so that by Christmas, if there were any left uneaten, they had turned into edible holiday decorations. Navidad some made into wreaths, festooned with straw-colored cord and bows. Charlotte added Christmas trees lights to hers and bought a ceramic ristra to decorate her kitchen.

Together they made chiles rellenos with the freshly peeled ones, using mixtures of cheeses--asadero from Mexican Mennonites, jack, cheddar, or mozzarella for the fillings, sometimes adding some shredded chicken. They froze some for later use, made salsa with onion and garlic, cooked some with tomatillos for enchilada sauce which they canned. They made green chile stew with chicken or pork and used some for burritos wrapped in big flour tortillas. Sometimes they made a gringo casserole version of chiles rellenos, layering the long chiles in a Pyrex baking dish, covering them with a thickening sauce of milk, flour and cheese and baking until it bubbled and formed a brown skin on top. They stuffed poblanos with walnuts after reading Like Water for Chocolate. They made jalapeno jelly.

Fred observed all this enthusiasm with growing frustration. After a few days of being served what he called “Mexican food,” he told Charlotte that he really would like some mac and cheese soon. So, the next day Charlotte made macaroni and cheese, but she couldn’t resist adding some green chiles.

“Not bad,” said Fred, “but you know, I just love plain mac and cheese, and why are you using this sharp cheddar instead of what you used to use?”

“Okay, dear, next time I’ll use American, just like you like.” But Charlotte couldn’t help thinking about her next recipe, maybe green enchilada sauce, so the following day she served Fred a big plate of corn tortillas flat, interspersed with American cheese, covered with a delectable sauce made with green chile, with a little tomatillo and onion and some spices.

“Charlotte, could we have a steak soon? Maybe a meat loaf and gravy? Pork chops…and some potatoes?”

“Of course, dear, I’ll find a nice steak tomorrow and fix it up just the way you like it.”

The next day Charlotte went shopping for a nice steak, splurging on a T-bone well-trimmed. But when it came to cooking it before Fred got home, she found a recipe for steak Tampico, smothered with green chiles and American cheese, and instead of potatoes, she couldn’t resist making Spanish rice. It looked lovely. Fred, however, looked at it with dismay. “What is all this stuff on my steak?” he said. He scraped it off violently and threw it in the sink. “I only wanted steak seared on both sides and red in the center, the way I always had it, and where are the potatoes? What is this rice-lookin’ stuff?”

After that, Charlotte fixed Fred the meals he always expected: plain mac and cheese, steak and potatoes, meat loaf, and beef stew, but she also cooked food for herself: chiles rellenos, green enchiladas, and adding chiles in her portion of beef stew and meat loaf. But somehow, Frank’s meals began to look less and less appealing--runny bacon, overdone eggs, steak brown in the middle, tasteless meat loaf. It wasn’t that Charlotte was ignoring Frank’s well-being; she simply concentrated on her chile-filled dishes while Frank’s food languished as an afterthought.

Tonight, will be fish, Charlotte thought. She found some sea bass at the supermarket. She grilled it nicely while he watched the news, then seasoned it and warmed some corn tortillas, filled them with fish and the lovely green chile salsa that she had invented herself.

“Dinner is ready, dear.” Fred came to the table, looked at the tacos, then at Charlotte with a look of hopelessness and despair. He ate a few bites, then said that he thought he was out of cigarettes and while he was out, he was going to get the car washed.

******

Several weeks later, Charlotte sat on her front porch enjoying the mild evening. Across the street in the neighbor’s yard there were three Italian cypresses. Dark green, they made her think of the Big Jim variety that she was so fond of. There was also a row of arbor vitae, brighter green and fatter, shaped like jalapenos. How like the cherry peppers she bought in a jar was the Mexican elder by the neighbor’s porch. Charlotte’s thoughts turned toward Christmas. This year, she thought, she would decorate the front porch with little white lights with those green chile pop-on plastic covers that she had seen at the drug store. Maybe even two strands. She wondered if she could learn to make tamales.

As Charlotte dreamed her plans, a blue Honda pulled up in the driveway. Fred got out and came up on the porch.

“Hi, Charlotte, how you doing?”

“Ooh, Fred, where have you been? I missed you.”

Charlott got up and hugged Fred in a big embrace.

“I just got upset, Char, I shouldn’t have stayed away so long. I was staying at Joe’s house while I was trying to figure out some things. It seemed like you were just ignoring me and didn’t care anything about what I did. And I was pissed that you were feeding me Mexican food all the time. Once a month might be okay, but every night, whoa.”

“Oh, Fred, I’m so sorry. I know how you must feel. You’re partly right, anyway, and it’s all my fault. You know, when you left, I didn’t even know you were gone for a couple of days. I was so wrapped up in my new discoveries. Can you forgive me?

“Sure, Char, now can we go in and get something to eat?”

“Oh Fred, you can make yourself a sandwich. There’s some sliced ham in the refrigerator. And we have to talk. Don’t you see? We’re drifting apart. We have drifted apart. You could have come back earlier if you truly loved me, instead you were out there somewhere, not needing me, and I was in here cooking, realizing that I didn’t really care if you were here or not.”

Fred found the ham and bread, mustard and mayo, mumbling that he hadn’t eaten a good homemade meal in a long time.

Charlotte continued. “And there’s something else, Fred. I’ve met someone!”

“What!”

“Oh, it’s not what you think. It’s a neighbor woman who has been cooking with me. And showing me how to make local dishes the right way. We’ve been having the best time. Her name is Navidad, and we have become really good friends.

Charlotte paused. “And here’s the big news -- we are going to start our own restaurant!”

“What?”

“We’re thinking about calling it El Restaurante Navichar, isn’t that funny? It’s a combination of our given names, Navidad and Charlotte. Her husband calls her Navi, and you are always calling me Char, so we just put them together, and voila, Navichar. It sounds a little strange at first, but people will be curious, and we will advertise. . .”

Alternate— We’re thinking about calling it Dos Mundos. Two worlds, the best of two traditions, and maybe some new combinations. We will each have our own specialties, etc.

“Char, that’s ridiculous! You don’t know the first thing about business... ”

“.... and Navidad’s brother is an accountant, and her father owns a building we can use. With his help, we can get a business start loan. Oh, Fred, it’s going to be so exciting!”

Fred moaned. “Who’s gonna cook my dinner?”

“Oh Fred, you can eat at our restaurant. We’ll see each other. And you can print our menu! You can advertise at the bottom of the menu, something like, “Menu courtesy of your printing firm, for your needs, see Fred.”

“Navi and I will each have our specialties. Her name means Christmas, you know, like in Feliz Navidad? And you know how people say ”Christmas” when they want both red and green chile on their plate? Well, Enchiladas Navidad will always come with red and green chile. My specialty might be Scallops Chesapeake, or Crepes Charlotte. Or Chiles Nogales. We can always find some meatloaf and gravy for you, Fred.”

12/6 Draft

There was a 1980 silver gray Ford Ranger pickup in Charlotte’s driveway. There once had also been a Honda, missing since the day her husband, Fred, had gone to the carwash and never returned.

When he did not return that evening, Charlotte fell asleep on the sofa and awoke the next morning with an appetite for chorizo and eggs, which she began to prepare after starting the coffee.

She went to the bedroom to awaken Fred. She thought he was sleeping later than usual. But Fred was not there.

Charlotte had dreamed the pleasant dream again of sailing in a green boat on a green sea, clipping along with the wind, not feeling it on her back as it pushed her effortlessly, as it had in her childhood when she sailed with her father on Chesapeake Bay.

Charlottes father was a major in the Army, but he loved sailing, and took every opportunity to take out his sloop, even when they were posted to places where it was difficult to find open water. Her mother rarely joined them because she didn’t enjoy

being on the water. She played bridge with other wives of commissioned officers, organized cocktail parties on a rotating basis, and cooked. She never missed an opportunity to try new dishes, but if her husband didn’t enjoy it, she knew that she wouldn’t prepare that again. Like so many men, he was a meat and potatoes man, bacon and/or sausage and eggs for breakfast, apple pie for dessert. Even after being warned by his doctor, he continued his usual diet, confident that when he returned home at the end of day, the smell of steak with onions and mushrooms would greet him in the foyer.

Like her father, Fred had been in the Army. So Charlotte was an army wife and followed him to an unfamiliar land. He was assigned to a research and development unit at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, a remote desert area where the first atomic bomb had been exploded.

After he was discharged, Fred wanted to stay in sunny New Mexico with its mild winters, scenic views, and easy-going way of life.

Cheap Housing developments had been built to accommodate all the people the government had brought to the area to help the German scientists work on the Bomb and then rockets and missiles.

Charlotte and Fred lived in a little cinder block house in a development of cinder block houses.

Charlotte missed the Chesapeake Bay and the green Eastern coast where she had grown up, but she had adjusted to her new life in the arid conditions, the all-day long sunshine, the hearing of residents speaking a foreign language. Charlotte had taken French in high school, but she didn’t seem to hear any cognates in Spanish, which was, after all, a local dialect.

Fred and Charlotte would sometimes drive up past Organ Pass to get a good look at the launches in the test area of the Tularosa Basin, which once had been a privately owned ranch. At first, it was the German V2 rockets that blasted off, but after Sputnik, it was all about putting capsules in orbit.

People who had lived in the valley in adobe houses on the street which had once been the Camino Real, the King’s Highway, where four hundred years ago settlers from Mexico had pushed their herds and households up that trail to El Norte, and in villages up and down the Rio Grande, now were getting used to seeing vapor trails from Nike and other missiles lifting off on the other side of the mountain.

At first, Charlotte was wary about Mexican food and always asked which was the least spicy if she ate out at Mexican restaurants, which Fred sometimes liked to do. The waitresses usually told her that the green sauces were the least spicy, so she always ordered something with green chile rather than the dreaded red with its threatening dried blood color and musky scent.

At the college, however, Charlotte observed that some chiles were being bred to be milder as well as spicier.

Professor Muldoon was an expert in capsaicin and explained in detail how there was a chart that detailed how spicy each variety was. Some had a heat index in the thousands, in fact, some of the smallest ones. They appealed to local tastes. Those with a lower heat index appealed to the taste of the newcomers to the valley, the snowbirds and retired people who were settling in the valley in increasing numbers. “They’re really very healthy,” Professor Muldoon said, “full of vitamin C, and you might enjoy them. Try the Big Jim variety next time you go out to the store and make some chiles rellenos. They’re real easy to cook, too.”

The first time Charlotte was brave enough to cook chiles she neglected to wear vinyl gloves and after cutting them up felt some heat in her fingers. “Oh dear,” she thought, “what are these going to do to my stomach?”

As it turned out, she also didn’t realize that they needed to be skinned, so there was a tough cellulose covering every slice in the stew that she was making.

Her neighbor, Navidad Rodriguez, who lived several

houses down the Calle de Sueños in her development, told her that she had to put them on the burner until the skin blackened, then put them in a plastic bag until the skins peeled off with little effort. That definitely improved the result, so her next stew was much better. In fact, the stew was wonderfully tasty, and even got a compliment from Fred.

The next day, even though there was plenty of stew left over, she decided to try chiles rellenos. Navidad helped her with that, too, using Monterrey jack for the stuffing and covering them with a breading before frying. Not bad, thought Fred, but I really would like some mac and cheese soon. So, the next day Charlotte made macaroni and cheese, but she couldn’t resist adding some green chiles.

“Not bad,” said Fred, “but you know, I just love plain mac and cheese, and why are you using this sharp cheddar instead of what you used to use?”

“Okay, dear, next time I’ll use American, just like you like.”

But Charlotte couldn’t help thinking about her next recipe, maybe green enchilada sauce. So the following day she served Fred a big plate of corn tortillas, flat, interspersed with American cheese, covered with a delectable sauce made with green chile sauce, with a little tomatillo and onion, and some spices.

“Charlotte, could we have a steak soon? Maybe a meat loaf? Pork chops...and some potatoes?”

“Of course, dear, I’ll find a nice steak tomorrow and fix it up just the way you like it.”

The next day Charlotte went shopping for a nice steak, splurging on a T-bone, well-trimmed. But when it came to cooking it before Fred got home, she found a recipe for steak Tampico, smothered with green chiles and American cheese, and instead of potatoes, she couldn’t resist making Spanish rice. It looked lovely. Fred, however, looked at it with dismay. “What is all this stuff on my steak?” he said. He scraped it off violently and threw it in the sink. “I only wanted steak seared on both sides and red in the center, the way I always had it, and where are the potatoes? What is this rice-lookin’ stuff?”

But somehow, Frank’s meals began to look less and less appealing -- runny bacon, overdone eggs, steak brown in the middle, tasteless meat loaf. It wasn’t that Charlotte was ignoring Frank’s well-being; she simply concentrated on her chile-filled dishes while

Frank’s food languished as an afterthought.

Tonight will be fish, Charlotte thought. She found some sea bass at the supermarket and thought that Fred might like that. She grilled it nicely while he watched the news, then seasoned it and warmed some tortillas, filled them with fish and the lovely

green chile salsa that she had invented herself.

Charlotte Ate Green Chiles

(original draft)

Charlotte ate green chiles every day -- Anaheim, Big Jim, poblanos, habaneros, anchos, jalapeños -- a day without capsaicin was a day without sunshine for Charlotte.

She often dreamed green -- sailing in a green boat on a green sea, clipping along with the wind, not feeling it on her back, pushing her along effortlessly as it had in her childhood when she sailed with her father on Chesapeake Bay… a long time ago.

She always planted peppers early in her own garden, but eagerly looked forward to the end of summer and the harvest, the chile festivals and roadside stands up and down the Rio Grande.

Nothing excited Charlotte more than the roadside roasting bins which blackened the tough skins of the chiles so they could be peeled off the soft green flesh, which she would prepare in a variety of ways.

Back in her kitchen, enclosed within its soft green walls, she immediately made chiles rellenos with the freshly peeled ones, using mixtures of cheeses -- asadero from Mexican Mennonites; jack; cheddar, or mozzarella for the fillings, sometimes adding some shredded chicken. She froze some for later use, made salsa with onion and garlic, cooked some with tomatillos for enchilada sauce which she canned. She made green chili stew with chicken or pork, and used some for burritos wrapped in big flour tortillas. Sometimes she made a casserole version of chiles rellenos, layering the long chiles in a Pyrex baking dish, covering them with a thickening sauce of milk, flour and cheese and baking until it bubbled and formed a brown skin on top.

She stuffed poblanos with walnuts after reading Like Water for Chocolate.

She made jalapeno jelly.

Charlotte also liked red chiles. When she first arrived in the Rio Grande Valley she was wary about Mexican food in restaurants and always asked which was the least spicy. The waitress usually told her that the green sauces were the least spicy, so she always ordered something with green chile rather than the dreaded red with its threatening dried blood color and musky scent. But she adjusted. At the rate of her chili consumption, she usually ran out of green before the new crop came in, and she was forced to either buy whatever green chiles were available at the market or resort to red. She always left some of the plants in her garden to ripen into red. They were so pretty, but they were equally decorative when picked and strung up on ristras, hung along a soft green kitchen wall and by her front door. On a cold late winter day the dusky taste of dried red chili powder made into a sauce for enchiladas or stirred into posole seemed perfectly appropriate.

But green was her passion.

Charlotte and her husband had lived in the same little cinder block house in a development of cinder block houses since Fred was discharged from the Army. Although she missed the Chesapeake Bay and the green Eastern coast, Fred had wanted to stay in New Mexico and Charlotte had adjusted.

After Fred got a job at a sign shop, Charlotte got a job as a clerk at the State University in the Agriculture School. In time, she was moved over to the chile research department, where she learned about all the varieties of chiles.

Charlotte observed that some chiles were being bred to be milder as well as spicier. Professor Muldoon was an expert in capsaicin and explained in detail how there was a chart that detailed how spicy each one was. Some had a heat index in the thousands (in fact, some of the smallest ones) while others were low and appealed to the taste of newcomers, the snowbirds and retired people who were settling in the valley in increasing numbers.

“They’re really very healthy, full of vitamin C, and you might enjoy them,” Professor Muldoon said. “Try the Big Jim variety next time you go out to the store and make some chiles rellenos. They’re real easy to cook, too.”

As it turned out, she also didn’t realize that they needed to be skinned, so there was a tough cellulose skin covering every slice in the stew that she was making. Fred poked at it with a fork.

Her neighbor, Navidad Rodriguez, who lived several houses down the “Street of Dreams” in her development, told her that she had to put them on the burner until the skin blackened, then put them in a plastic bag until the skins peeled off with little effort.

That definitely improved the result, so her next stew was much better. In fact, it was wonderfully tasty, and even got a compliment from Fred.

So the next day Charlotte made some macaroni and cheese, but she couldn’t resist adding some green chiles.

“Not bad,” said Fred, “but you know, I just love plain mac and cheese, and why are you using this sharp cheddar instead of what you used to use?”

“Okay, dear, next time I’ll use American, just like you like.”

But Charlotte couldn’t help thinking about her next recipe, maybe green enchilada sauce, so the following day she served Fred a big plate of corn tortillas, flat, interspersed with American cheese, covered with a delectable sauce made with green chiles with a little tomatillo and onion and some spices.

“Charlotte, could we have a steak soon? Maybe a meat loaf? Pork chops…and some potatoes?”

“Of course, dear, I’ll find a nice steak tomorrow and fix it up just the way you like it.”

So the next day Charlotte went shopping for Fred’s favorite cut of meat, splurging on a nice T-bone well-trimmed. But when it came to cooking it before Fred got home, she found a recipe for steak Tampico, smothered with green chiles and American cheese, and instead of potatoes she couldn’t resist making Spanish rice. It looked lovely. Fred, however, looked at it with dismay. “What is all this stuff on my steak?” he said. He scraped it off violently and threw it in the sink. “I only wanted steak seared on both sides and red in the center, the way I always had it, and where are the potatoes? What is this rice-lookin’ stuff?”

After that, Charlotte fixed Fred the meals he always expected: plain mac and cheese, steak and potatoes, meat loaf… beef stew, but she also cooked food for herself: chiles rellenos, green enchiladas, and adding chiles in her portion of beef stew and meat loaf.

Fred’s meals began to look less and less appealing, joyless, and not as much fun to cook -- runny bacon, overdone eggs, steak brown in the middle, tasteless meat loaf. It wasn’t that Charlotte was ignoring Fred’s well-being; she simply concentrated on her chile-filled dishes while Fred’s food languished as an afterthought.

Tonight will be fish, Charlotte thought. She found some sea bass at the supermarket and thought that Fred might like that. She grilled it nicely while Fred watched the news, then seasoned it and warmed some tortillas, filled them with fish and the lovely green chile salsa that she had invented herself.

“Dinner is ready, dear.”

Fred came to the table, looked at the tacos, then at Charlotte with a look of hopelessness and despair. He ate a few bites, then said that he thought he was out of cigarettes and while he was out he was going to get the car washed.

After dinner, Charlotte sat on her front porch enjoying the mild evening. Across the street in the neighbor’s yard there were three Italian cypresses. Dark green, they made her think of the Big Jim variety that she was so fond of.

There was also a row of arbor vitae, brighter green and fatter, shaped like jalapenos.

How like the cherry peppers she bought in a jar was the Mexican elder by the neighbor’s porch.

Her thoughts turned toward Christmas. This year, she thought, she would decorate the front porch with little white lights with those green chile pop-on plastic covers that she had seen at the drug store. Maybe even two strands. She wondered if she could learn to make tamales.