Piñon

There is no end of other foods that are unique or at least characteristic New Mexico. I won't go into most of them.



Although I should mention to the Piñon. This is a sort of pine…smallish, not exactly a shrub but no towering monarch of the forest either. You find it in forests and groves, particularly in the hillier areas, all over New Mexico…and, indeed, throughout the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. What makes the piñon part of an entry about food is that it produces a nut, sort of oblong and white. You can eat it and people have done so for thousands of years.



Here, people have piñon nut, roasted and sometimes salted, as a snack. That's common throughout the Southwest. But New Mexicans will also take piñon nuts and grind them with dark roasted coffee beans, rather the way that folk from New Orleans will mix their coffee with chicory. Coffee brewed from the mix can be best described as very, very rich, a little heavy (almost as though it already contained cream), and nutty.



Piñon coffee may be unique to the state. I'm not really sure. I've seen it in other parts of the southwest, but whenever I have… in Texas, Arizona, California…it has always come from here. Usually in the little yellow bags that are the trademark packaging of the New Mexico Pinon Coffee Company, a local institution and something of a genuine landmark. (You can see them at their website if you like. It's nmpinoncoffee.com/.)



Honestly, I'm not a regular drinker of piñon coffee. It's a little oily for my taste—though there are people who will touch nothing else. But there is one aspect of the piñon that I'm completely sold on—its wood. Burn it and you have an amazing smell… something like sandalwood, something like rosemary, but not really exactly like either.



I will leave you with an image: a night, not too cold, but chilly, and you are out of doors. There is a piñon wood fire. It flickers. It pops. Its strange, lovely scent is everywhere. You are with someone dear. There is a bottle of wine…



But, wait. There is no need of me here. You have an imagination. You have the capacity for romance. You may handle this.



Indeed, I charge you to do so. Envision it now. Construct it as your night. Your fire. Your lover…whoever that may be. Your wine.



Your sense of wonder.



Your stars, unimaginably bright, under a sky of ebon black.