Chili Peppers

Eating chili either raw or cooked or even added to a dish, is an acquired taste. When I was very young, my father rented some of our land to some local Spanish-speaking farmers. They planted chili. The plants grew and soon had beautiful chili peppers. I think I was about six or seven years old and had no idea what they were. I asked my father and he said pick one and take a bite. I remember that experience well to this day. But the experience did not give me an incentive to eat anything with chili for a long time. Later, when I was a Boy Scout, our troop stopped off for lunch at a small, Mexican restaurant. This was my first encounter with real "Mexican" food. I looked at the menu and decided that only thing I recognized was a tamale. I found out why they call them "hot tamales." It took me a many more years before I would agree to eat anything labeled Mexican. Now, I have acquired a taste for chilis in whatever form. For a long time, we grew chili plants and I ate them raw in salads.