Chile Toes

Chile season is starting here in the Land of Enchantment. For those of you not blessed to think of chile as your primary fruit, let me tell you that it’s a big deal around here.

The object of desire is green chile from Hatch, NM. It has a special flavor that is lusted for by connoisseurs around the globe. My family of four buys about 180-200lbs (82-91kg) of these emerald fruit every year around August and September. After you buy it, you generally have the vendor roast it for you until the skin blisters (just like roasting bell peppers over a stove-top flame—just on a larger scale. Then you either freeze it as is for use throughout the year, or you peel off the blackened skin first before freezing it (my family’s preferred method).

Today I bought this year’s first two bushels of chile. Before peeling it, I wanted to rearrange the remainder of our old frozen stock so that we wouldn’t have any hassle in placing our new treasures. What could go wrong? A ten-pound (2.5kg) frozen block of
Photo links to a small pic of my battered toe. (Fair warning.) chile falling from a height of six feet (2m) is what could go wrong. This block landed squarely on my left little toe. Breaking it. Again.

My toes have been broken so many times that I’ve lost count. The current five-hour-old example is rather disgustingly red-splotched with some deep purple slowly coming to the fore. At this point, I just hope I don’t have to pierce the nail; that’s just really annoying.

So, now it’s ice, tape, and aspirin. The jury’s still out as to whether I’m going to have to put off work tomorrow—I’m not sure the foot will be up to several hours of standing and walking. We’ll see.

Oh yeah…I still had to peel the chile I bought. I have to thank my mom for helping me out with that so the process only took four-hours instead of eight.