Chile Verde

Every other Sunday, my mom will make chile verde, which is just “green chile” in English. It’s different from the Americanized “chili”, which is just beans and beef, or something. Most people are familiar with it as a dip they give you with your tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants, or what they drizzle on your enchiladas. Typically, for people like me, it’s known as the “spicy one”, as red chile tends to be more mild in taste.

Anyway, my mom makes this sauce every other Sunday. It’s a bit of a process, and she usually does it all herself. She cuts, she purees, and she spices the way she needs to in order to obtain the final product, it usually takes around three hours. Though we refer to the dish as “chile verde”, the name only refers to the green sauce. To make it more of a meal, she’ll usually sear cut chunks of pork shoulder then simmer it in the sauce for awhile to finish it, so it’s all tender and delicious.

The meal isn’t really important to me itself, and it isn’t necessarily my favorite, but I think I’ll always remember this specific dish because every Sunday I spend working. I work all day, and come home at around seven o’clock. It’s nice to come home to, but it’s common practice for my mom to set aside good chunks of meat and a good amount of sauce in a bowl for me, a bowl that’s just “Ashley’s Bowl”, and there are consequences if anyone else touches it. She sets a good portion aside for me so that it, one, won’t be too hot when I come home to eat it, and two, becuse we’re all aware that my father and grandmother will eat all the good pieces of meat if she doesn’t think of me like she does.

It’s nice to know that she’ll do little things like this for me, as if I’m still small.