December 19 2024, 5:12PM

A little bit of New Mexico in Paris! What a surprise! When I used to take road trips around New Mexico, the huge sky enchanted me. Before I moved to the Southwest, I was living in Ohio, where the land is covered in thick woods, blocking wide views of open sky. Moving to Tucson in 1998, it was a strange experience to be able to see individual storms, sometimes multiple individual storms across the landscape. Those dark columns of solid rain were a new sight, something I never noticed in Ohio.

Earlier in December, Jim and I traveled to Paris, and we stayed at the Hôtel Les Deux Gares, our third-floor (fourth floor in American numbering) room overlooking the platforms of the Gare de l'Est. One evening I peeked out the window, to be surprised by the familiar sight of an entire individual storm off in the distance. No rain where we were, but heavy rain off elsewhere.

We attempted to go inside the newly-reopened Notre Dame, but were daily informed by the helpful website that all tickets were sold out. We did walk by one day, to find a huge line for non-ticket-holders, then a frigid wind picked up, followed by pouring rain and sleet. Clearly a visit to Notre Dame was not going to happen on this trip. No problem, we will be back.

What I do not find here, whether it was in France, or here in Spain, are the classic New Mexican green chiles. How I miss those. Once we move to a place with room to grow some vegetables, I will be getting some seeds so I can grow my own. Who knows, maybe I will set up my own little stand and sell Hatch green chiles to the unsuspecting Spanish. The Spanish dislike spicy foods, though I suspect they can be tempted by the flavor of the green chile. The great thing is there are varieties ranging from totally mild to nuclear, all with that unique green chile flavor.

I realize I sound like a broken record, having written about green chiles before. Here I eat padron chiles often in an attempt to satisfy myself, and while I adore padrons, they are not the same. The mythology around padrons I have found is a bit overplayed (the story is that once in a while, you find a spicy one, so eating them is commonly called “Spanish roulette”): not a single time have I run across an even mildly spicy one here. When I grew padrons back in Arizona, I gave them barely enough water, and they would get so intensely spicy that I had trouble eating them at times. But here, they have zero spice, to cater to the Spanish spice aversion.

My quest for spicy food in Barcelona will have to continue onward.