Most of you know that New Mexico is known for its Hatch Green Chilies. Now I am no expert on the varieties, but I do know they have a mild, medium, and hot(which is very hot according to Bill). So trying to be good citizens :-), we bought a bushel of the mild green chilies and a few pounds of the hot chilies.

Now to tell you how much this is the thing to do, every store, roadside vendor and the very few fruit and vege stands around here have their own roasters( I should have taken a picture). Including Wal-Mart.

Back to my story. We bought a whole bushel of mild chilies and decided to save money and roast them ourselves on our barbque. It took forever. We took 2 and a half days to do it, since it took awhile to roast, bag, and seal them. Now when you bags them(as we were told to do), you don't take off the skins. You wait till your ready to use them. It is a lot easier to remove the skins that way. So now we have a freezer full of green chilies that should last us the whole year. But the way we put them in everything, I'm not so sure. So I'm going to start posting a few recipes for awhile that were sucesses with the chilies. This was a huge favorite with our family. Enjoy!

Green Chilie Potat0 Cheese Soup

1 lb. bacon

1 onion

6 to 8 potatos

2 lb box velveeta cheese

6 to 8 roasted green chilies-skins off, deseeded, chopped

1 qt. half and half

2 to 3 tsp. chicken bullioun

salt and pepper to taste

Saute bacon( use however much u want to.), and 1 onion till done. Set aside

Dice up small 6 to 8 potatos. Boil in just enough water to cover and add some chicken bollioun to the water. Cook till soft. I take a little bit of the water out, but not to much. Mash lightly. You still want some small chuncks, but the potatos help thicken the soup. Add 1 quart of half and half. Then add 2 lbs. Velveeta cheese that has been cubed to help it melt faster. At this time also add the bacon and onion mixture. At this time also add 6 to 8 fresh skinned,seeded,and chopped Hatch Green Chilies. Keep stirring until the cheese is all melted. At this time add salt and pepper to taste, and if you feel it is a little thin, you can add some cornstarch. Now go get a bowl and enjoy.

As you can probaly tell, we had a great weekend in our little town of Artesia. They held a Balloons and Bluegrass festival. It was so much fun. It started out on Friday when two balloons were launched in the morning from our boys elementary school. It was awesome, since they were able to be so close as they got ready to launch, and then took off. All the kids were so excited. Also Mikayla got to come see them since the junior high principal told any teachers who wanted could come see them. Mikaylas class was one who came. So fun for all.

Saturday we all got up early to go watch them take off from really near our house. Well it turned out to be too windy, so none of the balloons took off. We ended up just going out to breakfast. Later in the morning, we went to the bluegrass part of the festival. They had some really good groups singing. Very enjoyable. There was also a glass blower there who was able to fix my broken cake top and the glass flower Bill bought me on our honeymoon. Needless to say, I was a very happy camper.

Sunday with the time change, we slept in and were still able to go and see the balloons take off. This time the weather was perfect and all the balloons were able to take off. There were about 20 of them and it was so beautiful. Shaun comment was, "this is so cool". I totally agreed.

This brought back some great memories since many years ago, dad and I took a hotair balloon trip down in San Diego. We saw the ocean at sunset. It was such a peaceful flight. It is something I have never forgotten and would love to do again someday.

Well I hope you all enjoyed the pictures as much as I did. If you would like to see the many more pics I took, look me up on picasa.