Another (mostly) good weekend.

If you'd told me a month ago that I'd be spending most of my weekends doing canning I would have said you were insane. Surely I'd have been playing music or building stupas; putting up chiles in jars for the winter would be about the furthest thing from my mind. But that is what I find myself doing, these last two weekends.

As it happens, my mother's best freind's aunt from Puebla just happens to be visiting when I go home and so, long story short, I get the at-least-four-generations-old, oral transmission recipe from her for chiles chipotles right at the same time fresh Jalapenos are positively overrunning the farmers' market a few blocks from here to the point that I can get 'em by the bushel, if I want to, and for next to nothing, and with a clear conscience besides, since *all* the money I spend goes to the farmers directly *and* I can *source* my food right down to which branch of which family grew what with which water in which soil in which part of town.

The only problem being that the recipe calls for chipotles -- which are fresh jalapenos dried by smoking.

So last you heard, in here, assuming I wrote it, which I'm not sure I did, I was smoking them over a hibachi. Two attempts doing it that way convinced me it might be well worthwhile to invest in an honest-to-god smoker, since doing it the hibachi way was *both* worthwhile *and* insanely labour intensive -- five minutes inattention turning pounds of pefectly good peppers into charcoal useless for anything other than "sweetening" soil, and wasting inordinate quantities of wood, besides. And for forty bucks, now that the first batch out of my (formerly) shiny new smoker is *done* and done *right* and *consistently* in a way they *never* were in my jerry-rigged hibachi setup, I have to say it probably was a good solid investment, even if I *did* buy it new, which I almost never do.

In the last two days I've smoked ten pounds, and I have to tell you -- the first time or two there's a certain regional "charm" with smoking chiles out front every day, but when you're doing lots of it repeatedly it's just goddamned annoying. Sure the hickory smells great, but only 'til it fills your abode with so much smoke that you can't breathe. And maybe more importantly, all the same naturally-ocurring chemicals in the seeds and placentas of the jalapenos that make your fingertips burn for two days after making pico del gallo wind up being transformed into tiny bits of airborne particulate nastiness. Walking by you might think "ah! how wonderfully, typically New Mexico", but if it's right outside your window, hour after hour, after less than a day you start thinking more along the lines of "damn, why do my eyes hurt all the time?" and "what ever went so terribly wrong with my sinuses and lungs? Am I really *that* frail?".

Suffice to say the smoker's now set well away from all the buildings! Charm is one thing. Acute respiratory crisis is another.

Then yesterday -- a very good day -- I did a *very* stupid thing. ZzigZzag was in town and I invited him over to pick up a jar of batch #1 -- that's not the stupid thing I did -- I welcomed having someone visit me at home more than you can possibly imagine. The stupid thing I did was that after he left, I brought in the smoker after dark because it "seemed" cooler than it had been for most of the day, which I took to mean "safe".

So I can't sleep for most of last night and don't know why, but recognize the signs of acute carbon monoxide poisoning come next morning. My stomach is upset, I'm constantly nauseated, the diarrhea's just plain nasty, and I feel downright hungover all day long. Good thing I had the windows open (if I hadn't I might have died), but still! The warnings that came with the smoker, to the effect that it might take 24-48 hours for the coals to completely extinguish was *not* just some waiver of liability thing. It really takes that long! So the coals smouldered indoors all night and made me sick, sick, sick in the meantime.

Never again! I've got part 2 of batch 2 smoking out there now but I'm not bringing it in. If anyone's damn fool enough to steal a still-hot smoker filled with jalapeno peppers, so be it, and may they expire horribly in all the fumes for their nefarious deed!

Having said all of that: setting out a grill of any kind seems to have a magical effect on one's neighbours. Suddenly they all say "hi" and want to know what's cooking and are *very* nice to you! They're all probably thinking right now that I'm a total jerk for not sharing whatever I have with 'em right off the grill, which I'm sure they all suspect is meat, but mark my words, come the holidays, they're all getting half-pint jars of precious homemade chipotles.

Yesterday, Faye, my next door neighbour, invites me into her apartment. This is as rare as my inviting anyone who lives next door into mine. (We're friendly but we do lead separate lives.) She points out three cottonwood carved figures on top of her gas heater and says I can have 'em for ten bucks a piece or all three for $25. She tells me her brother carved 'em.

They are amazing, museum-quality katsina dolls. (Maybe I'm using the word "katsina" all wrong here; and if I am, I'm sorry, but I'm an ignorant white boy from Texas, remember!) The tallest is a male figure holding a drum called "Yellow Corn" with a pueblo built into his side which looks just a little too much like the apartments where I live, complete with sunset in the background, for me to ever want to move him from this very room. The second tallest is a female called "White Corn" whose wears a turquoise and coral necklace and whose body she partly reveals to be made of corn. The shortest figure, in classic gender-bending native fashion, is the son, but his name -- get this -- is "Spider Woman", and he/she carries a basket of corn. Guess which figure I most identify with. :)

I can't pretend to know what the significance of these pieces is. I'd gladly photograph them to show here but honestly believe there's something or other behind that "NO CAMERAS ALLOWED" sign you see on the edge of whatever reservation. On the most basic level, the State Fair just ended and quite possibly these pieces simply didn't sell. On another level I know they all *belong* together, somehow, and didn't dare break up the set. It's like a nativity scene -- you don't mix and match pre-Raphaelite Maries and with Renaissance Josephs. They work together, compositionally speaking, and they are *definitely* "father/mother/son". I even pointed out politely to Faye that she might get more selling them up the street at the Palms, but she made it clear she wanted me to have them. Why, I honestly don't know. They're done in a contemporary style with all the ancient motifs everywhere. They are amazing. Absolutely timeless but imbued with such a sense of place that they *belong* here and no other place on earth. I do not know what to make of them, but know that they are sacred objects. A very far cry from tourist ware. The detail in each is quite incredible. I think the colours are all natural dyes -- they're very dark and muted, while being distinct, at any rate.

Stupid cat, as I was writing this, knocked "Spider Woman" off the clock on top of the piano. By some miracle or other the uncarved base cracked but the piece itself remains intact. They're all behind glass in the Los Alamos bookcase now, even though there's not sufficient headspace to have them all standing up. I'm going to repair the base with hide glue when I have the wherewithal to do so, but they don't belong out where the cats can get at them. Stupid cats.

This is the new cat -- no surprise. Maybe I didn't write about that here, but last week a cat came up to me while I was smoking chiles and I swear he looked just like the cat from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and *said* to me "it's getting cold outside and I don't want to live like I am living any more, have seen how your cats live indoors, and want to live like that if you will be so kind as to have me, even if it means no more climbing trees". So after about half a week of territorial hissing everyone's finding their place. And he's about the freindliest cat I have (when he's not knocking priceless sacred objects off the piano, because he doesn't know how I live, like the other cats *do*, because they've lived here for most of their lives). I gave him a *very* stern warning after he knocked Spider Woman off the piano, naturally, but I am sure the resentment will heal.

The way I live is utterly ridiculous. I can't pretend that it is otherwise.

I bought more stuff today, but it's all legitimately justifiable stuff. Went to Chase Hardware on North Fourth and got some labels for my jars of chiles and a book called the "Ball Blue Book of Preserving", which is apparently the latest edition of a book that's been around since 1909. Yes, Ball, as in the manufacturers of mason jars. It's very helpful, in a very straightforward "here's what you need to do in order to prevent botulism" sort of way.

So -- Mr. ZzigZzag: don't hesitate to eat your chiles! I'm sure they're fine but also know I didn't follow the instructions to the letter regarding keeping track of temperatures and stuff, so please, don't let your chiles sit forever. However good they are (or not) there'll be another far more carefully made batch coming up soon, I assure you. The whole process is pretty intuitive, really, but not 100% completely. I don't think I let the mixture sit in the jars in the steam long enough, since I came from downriver, where we've got a higher boiling point, and all that happy shit.

So please, do eat them NOW. And tell me honestly what you think. You won't get sick. But if you hang onto 'em for a few months you just might. DUH. It's all part of the great experiment. Part one is SLAM, Part two is CLAM, the first letter being not "shop" but "cook". And goodness knows what nasty bugs you can get eating uncooked CLAMs.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, count yourself lucky! Your grandparents won't be deported, and you won't taste my fantastic chiles 'til I'm 100% sure they're all nice and safe for all eternity.

Enough!

Be well!