Tracy’s Peppers
“I feel very connected to peppers. I love planting them. I love harvesting them from the pepper plants. I genuinely think my love for peppers was cultivated because of my dad. I think that's the only positive thing I gained from our relationship.”
The hot summer months of August and September in Colorado can be defined by the sight of roadside stands and farmers’ markets populated with giant rotating vats of Hatch and Pueblo green chile peppers. Roasting and filling the air with a charred, bright abundance. They are a unique part of Colorado and New Mexico's cultural heritage and appear in the local cuisine in nearly every shape and form.
Most of the year, canned green chiles are used to create the regional favourite, Green Chile: a stew abundant in Colorado and New Mexico that is served on everything from burritos, eggs, and hamburgers - and even on its own as a soup with a tortilla on the side. But in these few months, the freshest possible peppers are available to be canned, stewed, and eaten by themselves in order to properly take advantage of their bright, deep-roasted flavour that canned chiles simply cannot replicate.
Tracy’s father moved her family to Colorado when she was nine. Her mother was diagnosed with Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis when Tracy and her twin brother, Eric were born. “She's been sick my whole entire life. I was primarily her caretaker throughout our childhood. Meanwhile, my dad was in Minnesota, cheating on my mother.” Tracy’s dad retired from the police department he worked at in Minnesota and moved to Colorado full-time when she was 13, but continued to take trips to Minnesota to see other women. “That was kind of the demise of my family.” She remembers her mother, brother, and older sister, Kelly “would see his car pop into the driveway and we would all just book it to our rooms. We just did not want to be around him.”
There is a large debate within Colorado and New Mexico over which green chiles are better, more worth our time. Hatch Green Chiles, native to the Hatch Valley in New Mexico, is arguably the more famous and most widely available green chile. Similar to champagne, a Hatch Green Chile can only be called that if it originates from the Hatch Valley. Then there are Pueblo Chiles, from Pueblo Colorado, which have a longer growing season and thicker flesh for better roasting.
Historically in Colorado, Hatch Green Chiles we’re the default at grocery stores and roadside stands. However, there has been a push in recent years for Coloradans to start eating more Pueblo Chiles to support local farmers in Colorado. In 2015, Whole Foods announced they would only sell Pueblo Chiles in their Colorado stores, and Governor Hickenlooper declared the second Saturday of the Colorado State Fair ‘Pueblo Chile Day.’
“To me,” Tracy says, “he was probably the nicest. I was kind of his golden child, I guess. Kelly was the older one, she was sneaking out, she would get in trouble a lot. He was very emotionally abusive to Eric and would make fun of him all the time. Whenever Eric was being really friendly and nice to people dad would just laugh at him. Looking back as an adult, it was just not a good situation.”
As complicated as her relationship with her father was and is today, Tracy recalls one memory they share together that brings about at least a few positive feelings for her. Tracy’s dad would take her to a big farmers market in Denver, just the two of them, on the weekend sometime during those summer months. “The green chiles that come in the bags. The smell is amazing. He would get a couple of hot bags for himself, he would get a couple of mediums, and he would always get a mild bag for me. They roast them, they put them in the huge thing. Sometimes they're in little Ziplocs, sometimes they're in a big plastic bag. Then, for a couple of weeks straight, my dad and I, every single day would sit down at the table just with a thing of salt, we would peel the skin off and, we would just sit there at the table, him at the head spot and me next to him, and just eat our green chiles. We wouldn't talk or anything, we would just sit there and just enjoy the flavour together. Whenever I eat these in adulthood— I'm actually probably going to go get some this week — it definitely makes me feel a little weird because it makes me feel sad that I'm missing out on something in terms of a relationship with a dad, but it also kind of makes me feel also a little happy because it brings me to that only connection I have with him.”
The pepper stands often have hot, medium, and mild varieties of these peppers for everyone’s tastes. They are thrown into a giant rotating drum and roasted over a bright orange flame. The smell of a pepper stand is the most notable part of the experience, spicy and bright with undernotes of a rich char and smoke. Once roasted, they are bagged and sealed to loosen the skins for easy peeling. Then people take them home for immediate consumption or freeze them to use in later months.
Tracy’s parents divorced when she was 16. Now at 25, she’s been reflecting and attempting to build a better relationship with her father. “He did end up sending a letter to all of us kids, maybe like two and a half, three years ago, apologizing for cheating on my mom, but he included a paragraph in it saying mom was also at fault in the relationship. I don't think he knows how to truly love. I can't say with certainty that he loves me. And I also can't say with any certainty that I love him per se, because I just have such a skewed relationship with him. So in my adulthood, I think I've been handling him a little bit better, but he's definitely a huge part of, like, how I treat myself and how I view things in the world.”
Tracy has been doing seasonal farmwork in Colorado for the past few years. She says that every time it’s chile pepper season, “I feel the strongest [connection] to my dad during those months. I'll send him pictures of the Poblanos and Anaheim's that we harvest at the food farm. Every time I get a bag of chile peppers, I always send him a picture of it. It's like a portal into some communication between my dad and me. It provides that sense of normalcy for me for just that brief text or that brief conversation about chile peppers. I know it’s not necessarily a recipe or anything extravagant, but it's interesting to me how one vegetable can kind of change my overall feelings towards my dad.”