The signal to summer’s end in Colorado is The Pueblo Chile Fest, which takes place every third weekend in September. The sun is still scorching, the crops are in, and it’s time to celebrate Pueblo’s favorite food: the chile pepper. Vendor tents, artisan crafts, carnival food, games, demonstrations, live music, and a jalapeno eating contest will line the streets September 21-23. The Chile Fest boasts an average of 140,000 attendees over 3 days.
The Chile Fest takes up six blocks right in the heart of downtown Pueblo, where the Riverwalk crosses Main Street. The surrounding blocks of Pueblo’s Historic District are suffused with the familiar smells of cinnamon almonds and carnival food. They blend with the unique smell of the festival, roasting chiles. It’s very hard to describe the smell: the campfire musk of roasting peppers blends with an acidic spice that cause tears and burning in the nose and throat.
Vendors and chile growers come to the Chile Fest from all over Southern Colorado, bringing a wide variety of chile types and related items from all over Southern Colorado and New Mexico. The daily rain early in the summer made them big, and the constant sun raised their heat. Farm workers roast the chiles right on the street in big drums. When I buy mine, they are still warm.
Chile peppers (not chili, that’s a red Texan soup) come in a wide variety of flavors and heat levels, from sweet and mild bell peppers to the hair-raising tongue torture of Ghost Chiles and Trinidad Scorpions. Only the brave try much hotter than a Habanero. Pepper heat is measured in Scoville units, and it’s surprising how mild some of the more popular peppers are compared to others. Mirasol, the most popular variety of chile at the festival, rates at about 5,000 on the Scoville scale–pretty mild in comparison.
Peppers have amazing health benefits. They not only raise endorphin levels which give a boost to mood and energy, but they also contain capsaicin, which is what gives peppers their heat. Capsaicin has all sorts of benefits, most notably the clearing of mucous membranes. Eating hot peppers to clear out lungs and nasal passages may seem counter-intuitive, but it helps. Other benefits are coronary health, digestive health, diabetes regulation, and brain health. Regular consumption of capsaicin can cause extended mood elevation. Maybe that’s why everyone’s so nice in Pueblo. It may also account for the longevity of some of the cultures who make peppers a part of their daily diet.
A few things I plan to do at the festival: buy a half-bushel of Pueblo chiles along with a few small bags of Dynamite and XXX chiles, watch The Verdict perform at 6 pm Saturday, taste free ice cream, try to win a free overnight at the Midnight Rose Hotel and Casino, taste some wine, and see a Native American dance troupe. (One of the dancers is only three years old; these native people obviously train for these sacred dances as soon as they can walk. It was so nice to see the audience appreciate what has become a dying art).
The roasted chile smell pervades the car interior on the way home from the Chile Fest. It lingers there for several days afterward. Large batches of chiles must be flash-frozen for a few hours, then bagged for use throughout the year in all kinds of locally favorite recipes, most notably the “slopper,” a Gray’s Coors Tavern invention that involves a hamburger patty on a single bun slathered with green chili (the soup, made with local peppers). Side it with some smothered fries and it’s heaven. Because I buy so many, it’s easy to get used to adding chiles to almost every recipe. Who knows? I may live longer as a result.
