red or green; Red or Green; RED or GREEN? - Christmas!

Well, I got a special treat last night.  Ms. Dee and Mr. Stu took me out to dinner with them.  We went to a locally owned restaurant.  The cuisine; New Mexican!  Bet you haven't heard that before.  In Albuquerque there are plenty of restaurants that you'll be familiar with; McDonalds, Taco Bell, Auntie Anne's Pretzels, IHOP, Olive Garden, Apple Bee's and even Denny's.  They have Italian, Greek, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Mexican and Native American foods here.

One of the special foods of the area is New Mexican.  It is a blend of Mexican with beans and rice but added to that is the 'heat' from the Southwest.  You may be familiar with Tex-Mex type of food, and this is similar, but very different.  In New Mexico the 'heat' that is added is chile.  It is a type of pepper like a bell pepper, but much much hotter, not quit as hot as a jalapeno pepper, but you can still feel it!

Here we are, entering Los Cuates (The Twins).

Chips and Salsa - and VERY HOT Salsa at that.  Ms. Dee forgot how hot it was here, it is homemade in the restaurant.  She needed water right away.

Closer look and you can even see the Red Chile Pepper seeds in the sauce.  This is more of a sauce than a salsa, but they still called is salsa.  Chips are made here too, not prepackaged.

Trying my first taste of chile salsa.......yowee that is hot stuff!!  Ms. Dee only dips in to about the amount I have here, Mr. Stu....he likes about 10 times more - ouch....

 Stuffed Sopaipilla, Mr. Stu sharing his meal with me.  A Sopaipilla (soap-a-pee-ya) is like a triangular shaped bread, this was stuffed with chicken, cheese and green chili.  Lettuce and tomatoes come with the meal.  It was pretty good.

Ms. Dee shared her meal too.  It is a Blue Corn Chicken Enchilada with re-fried beans and Spanish rice.  Ms. Dee doesn't get any chili, she says the chip sauce is enough for her.  And yes, I said Blue Corn Enchilada.  It really is blue, you can see just a tiny bit of it peaking out of the sauce at the bottom center of the dish.  It is like a corn taco shell, only it is soft and not crunchy.  This is Ms. Dee's favorite meal and Los Cuates is her favorite restaurant too.

Ahhhh, my favorite was the Sopaipilla.  Yes, Mr. Stu had a Stuffed Sopaipilla, but you can just have them like a side dish or roll for dinner too.  And this way - you eat them nice and warm with HONEY!!!  Yummy, yummy honey.  Boy was that ever good.

So, the only thing left to ask is - Red or Green?  Chili in the Southwest can be either Red or Green.  Green is usually hot and more flavorful, Red is just very hot!  So which do you like, hot or very hot?  Or - would you like a combination of both - Red and Green - making it Christmas!!!  Yes - they really say that; all year round - Red, Green or Christmas?  LOL - good thing I came here in December, otherwise it might be confusing.