Burning For Community
January 16, 2008 Rocky Mountain Chronicle

Andrea Godshalk

As a child, I was both audience of and advisor to my dad’s spicy recipes. He would move among cutting boards, sinks and steaming pots, then deliver a spoonful to my sister and me.

“Try it,” he’d say expectantly.

We would try it, our mouths would burn, and we would cry, “It’s too hot!”

“No, it’s not,” he’d always reply.

This went on for years, steadily training us in the appreciation of a good, quality burn. As my dad experimented with salsas and sauces, my sister and I developed a refined palate for the flavor of chilies and for the burn. Now it is rare for me to find a hot sauce or spicy dish hot enough, let alone too hot.

There are many different flavors and burns. Wasabi brings a sinus burn, which comes on slowly after a sweet luring. Good curry warms you from the chest out after feeding you a savory flavor. Then there are those vulgar hot sauces. Relying on labels with half-naked people, vinegar and machismo, these sauces sometimes use extracts of capsaicin to burn you into submission. (Capsaicin is the natural component of chilies that produces the burn, but in concentrated amounts, it can be dangerous and sear out the point: the fresh, sweet flavors and authentic slow burns of a good chili.)

Like the saying goes, you can smoke, but don’t smoke like a white man. Similarly, it is not a good idea to eat spicy things like a white man, looking only for the most extreme burn possible, all the while trampling over the flavors. A good love of chilies should include an appreciation of what comes from the Earth to keep us warm, our noses clear and our minds humming.

Over years of experimentation, my dad perfected his favorite recipe, habañero jelly. This sauce, with its sweetness from honey and its fresh, clean burn from the chilies, came to be our family favorite. We ate it on everything. A staple at the dinner table, in a small, thick canning jar with a long-handled teaspoon, the sauce was always a deep auburn. But every season it varied in heat and texture, ranging from mild accumulative heat to instant mouth-centered fire, and from thick jelly to thin syrup. The alchemy of chilies and gelatin, and how the same amount of each will always produce a different consistency, is still a mystery to my dad.

This year, the chilies for the jelly came from a bountiful plant. An old family friend tended to it all summer and into the fall. The hottest peppers come at the end of the season. Our friend left the peppers on the plant until the last minute before the frost. This plant was tall, maybe two feet high, and full of chilies. Like orange lanterns glowing on the delicate branches, this habañero plant gave 112 peppers. This is the abundance of a proud plant and the joy of a wonder-filled backyard gardener. This is one small example of food pathways in our community.

We must cultivate and protect these local pathways and intimate processes from the overpackaged, cardboard-tasting substitutes we are sold. Educating ourselves about where our food comes from, the farmers who grow it and what is happening to the farmland is a good start. At the Community Food Security Coalition’s website, foodsecurity.org, you can learn all about the progress of the federal farm bill, as it lurches through Congress. The farm bill, which comes up for renewal every five years, has a huge impact on programs that support Farm to School programs, farmers’ markets and community food centers, and farmer training programs. It is also the bill that has, in the past, given huge payouts to corporate farms. A strong and circumspect farm bill will nourish us and support justice.

The only interesting thing about the presidential election that Andrea can identify is that Latinos are registering to vote in large numbers and will be hugely influential, hopefully forcing candidates to get real about immigration.