I drove this time with many pounds of fresh green chile in the back of my truck. All of it sold for cost plus fuel to friends desperate for chile. You’d think that a shipment of life saving serum was on the way by the email updates and progress reports on Facebook. And the final pickup in Oregon! Outside a hotel in the dark, joyous customers, shouts, cheers and the like. It had all the hallmarks of a drug buy successfully completed.

Paula came with me on that trip. We had 18 hours in the truck to talk about chile, business, recipes and the usual small talk that is highway conversation. I like to think that this was where Paulita’s was born. Somewhere in Utah, in the cab of a 2006-3/4 ton Silverado loaded with chile.

Paula flew home and left me with the bones of a few recipes that I worked on for the next 7 months in Oregon. But that chile on my back wouldn’t let go! We tried various methods of shipping frozen chile, but none were successful.

I came home and work took a huge amount of my time.  In addition, Paula changed jobs. Suddenly we looked up, it was 2015, and I was out for a knee replacement. While I recuperated, I managed to talk Paula into writing down her sauce recipe in detail with me there taking critical measurements (on crutches no less).

And still the chile wouldn’t let go!

Most of 2016 and part of 2017, we spent perfecting her recipes for production and building a commercial kitchen. We added the seasoning as I need chile constantly now. It travels with me everywhere and grateful addicts have rejoiced. We made the marinade as I love fajitas. The salad dressing came late to the party as I was sitting in a restaurant one day feeling miserable that there was not a chile in sight. And there is a salsacue sauce in the works as well as a red chile mix.