September in New Mexico

Every year around this time, I'd start smelling the delicious, mouthwatering aroma of roasting green chiles, and ever year, I'd groan at the thought of dealing with 25 lbs.  If you buy that much, they'll roast them for free.  I supposed we could buy less and roast it ourselves, but really, it's a good deal.

I must have mentioned this to several people, because they all told me that no one deals with 25 lbs at a time.  You portion out the whole roasted chiles into ziploc bags, toss them in the freezer, and deal with them when you use them.  That sounded pretty easy to me, and after dealing with so many peaches (and now apples from my friend's tree), I wanted to do easy.

My mistake was buying the green chiles when David was home on Monday.  Do you want to know what 25 lbs of peeled, seeded, and chopped chiles looks like?  Because I have a picture of it.  18 cups, if you're wondering, or about 3/4 cup per lb of chiles.

David's operating attitude is "why put off what you can do right now?"  I hope and pray the kids pick up on that, instead of my more typical "what HAS to be done now?"  He was mostly concerned that I wouldn't use them if they weren't ready to go, but I thought we could at least try it the easy way the first year?  Nope.  At least he worked just as hard (if not harder, since I took an hour nap in the middle) at prepping them.  And it is nice to have little 1/2 cup pucks of green chiles in the freezer.

Our favorite use for them is green chile stew...most authentic NM recipes seem to have potatoes in them, but the potatoes can get a little mealy if you freeze them.  So I use this recipe (which is beef instead of pork), and we eat it over rice/beans/potatoes or just with biscuits.  Yum!