Larry and Carol, our friends who live in Kansas, are big fans of fresh roasted green chilis. Now you can't buy these just anywhere, especially in Kansas. On our way back from Arizona, Carol asked if we could stop in Albuquerque to get some chilis. Since we're nice people, we agreed.
We went to an Albertson's and they had chilis there. We bought a 20 pound bag. Carol had a little trouble with her credit card. She couldn't seem to remember her zip code and so the purchase wouldn't go through for a while.
They had a roasting thing outside where they would roast your chilis for free. This probably only took ten minutes or less. While they were roasting, the guy was telling us how to take care of them. We were to let them steam for about an hour and a half and then lay them out on the counter to cool before putting them on ice or in the freezer. This posed a slight problem since we were planning to drive to Oklahoma City that night.
By the way, our little Neon was packed to the rim for this trip. The trunk was completely full, we even opened the seats between the back and the trunk and shoved stuff in that way! The back seat was full to the roof except for space for one person to sit.
This idea of laying out the chilis to cool after an hour was not possible! We decided to put them in the cooler (without ice) in the bag and let them steam in there. We figured that they would be ok for the rest of the trip to OK City. Carol opened the cooler to check on them at a gas station. Boy did they smell up the car!
Another side note, Janeille and Carol had been doing stuff with green chilis earlier in the week and the smell about killed me. I was 15 weeks pregnant and didn't appreciate a lot of smells. Luckily, the smell in the car wasn't too bad.
When we got to OK City, it was 1:00 in the morning local time. Since we had been in AZ, it seemed like 11:00 to us. The time spent looking for motels was anything but fun. We accidentally pulled into a gentlemen's club parking lot and about got hit by a drunk gentleman. Then we found some hotels further down the interstate and couldn't get there because of construction. We finally went to a place and it was way more money than we wanted to spend for one night. The fourth hotel we went to was ok. The guy brought the price down to $75. I think he realized that since it was 2:00 AM by now, he could let the room go for a little less than normal.
We got up to the room and laid out all the chilis on the dresser and desk to cool. It was quite a mess and made the room smell real nice! The next morning we packed them back in the cooler and put ice on them. They rode safely to Kansas just like that!
Larry was very excited that we made the sacrifice to get chilis for him. Let's hope that every time they eat them, they remember the pain it took to get them there!
