Colorful Summer Salsa

Late January in Denver and the house is quiet because the kids are back in school and Lisa is back at the ER and I am back in my office at Eldorado Prep at six in the morning with a thermos of black coffee and three game tapes from last fall queued up on the laptop. We finished 9-2. We lost in the second round of the playoffs to a team that ran the ball forty-eight times and dared us to stop them and we did not stop them. I have watched that film eleven times since November. It does not get better.

People ask why I keep watching the loss. The answer is because next year is built in the film of last year. The kids who got knocked off blocks in November need to spend the winter learning what knocked them off. The defensive line that gave up four-point-three yards a carry in the playoff game needs to be a different line by August. You do not fix a run defense in August. You fix it in January, in the weight room, in the film room, in the hours when nobody is paying attention and nobody is keeping score. The boys who do the work in January are the boys who lift trophies in November. Everyone else is talking.

Diego is seventeen. He is a senior. He is six-foot-one, a hundred eighty-two pounds, and runs a four-five-three. He caught fifty-eight passes for nine hundred yards as a junior. He is the emotional center of this team and he does not entirely know it yet. He came home from school yesterday and sat at the kitchen counter and ate a green chile cheeseburger I had made for him and asked, very quietly, "Dad, do you think we can win it." I did not answer for about ten seconds. Then I said, "I think you can. I think the team can. But I am not going to tell you we are going to. I am going to tell you what we have to do to give ourselves the chance." He nodded. He took another bite. He said, "Okay." That was the conversation. The next thirty weeks live inside that "okay."

Lisa took the twins to the rec center for swimming. Sofia is upstairs reading a thousand-page novel about something I do not understand. Marco came in earlier wet from snow and asked for a snack and I made him a quesadilla with the last of the green chile from the freezer. The freezer is half empty. February. We always run out by February. By July it is a wasteland. By September we go down to Las Cruces and the world is whole again. The food calendar is the only calendar I really keep.

I made green chile stew last night for the first time in a couple of weeks. Mamá's recipe, the old pot, the one she gave me when we moved to Denver in 2014 — not the family pot, that one will never leave Las Cruces — but a copy she had made at the same place she got her first one, hammered aluminum, the kind that distributes heat the way enamel never can. I browned the pork shoulder in lard. I sauteed the onions until they went translucent. I added the potatoes and the chiles and the broth and the garlic and I let the whole thing simmer for two hours. I did not add cumin. Mamá would call me from Las Cruces if I added cumin. New Mexican green chile stew does not have cumin. That is a hill I will die on.

The boys came back from swimming and the twins ate two bowls each. Marco said, "It is too spicy." Elena said, "It is the right amount of spicy." Marco is ten and his palate is still developing. Elena is also ten and her palate is fully formed. They are twins and they are the same age and they are completely different people and the older I get the more I understand that this is one of the great mysteries of parenting — you make two children at the same time in the same way and they come out as two different humans with two different inner lives, and the only thing you can do is try not to confuse them with each other.

Tomorrow I have a film session with the offensive coordinator at five-thirty. We are starting to install the package we want to run for Diego in the fall. Routes that take advantage of his speed. Concepts that get him in space. He has a year left and I want to give him the season he has earned. I am also trying not to coach him into a player he is not. He is good. He is not great. He has the talent of a kid who will play three or four years of D-1 ball and have a beautiful college experience and then become a coach, or a teacher, or an athletic director, or something else that uses what he learned but does not depend on him being one in a million. I have tried to tell him this in a way that does not sound like I am ranking him. He hears me sometimes. Sometimes he does not.

I prayed this morning. I do most mornings. Not anything formal — just the rosary I keep in the kitchen drawer, fingered while the coffee drips. For Lisa. For the kids. For Mamá and Papá in Las Cruces. For Ruben, who has been gone six and a half years and is still on my mind every single morning. For the boys on the team. For myself, that I have the patience this year that the year is going to require. The dog tags hang in their place on the chain. Hector's ring is not on a chain yet — Papá is still alive, still in his recliner in Las Cruces watching reruns and grumbling about the metformin. The day will come. Not yet. Please not yet.

Feed your people. The game is won at the table. And in the film room. And in the weight room. And in January, when nobody is watching.

The freezer is half-empty now and the green chile stew I made last night cleaned out what was left of it — by July it will be a wasteland, and we all know it. So when Diego asks for something to dip his chips into on a Saturday afternoon, and when the twins come in from the cold looking for anything bright and alive, I fall back on this salsa. It is not a replacement for Mamá’s stew. Nothing replaces that. But it keeps color on the table in the gray months, it takes fifteen minutes, and every single person in this house will eat it without complaint — which, if you have coached a family the way you coach a football team, you understand is its own kind of victory.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min (plus 30 min chilling) | Servings: 8

Ingredients

4 medium Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels, thawed if frozen
1 can (15 oz) black beans, rinsed and drained
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
1 orange bell pepper, finely diced
1/2 medium red onion, finely diced
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 2 limes (about 3 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Prep the vegetables. Dice the tomatoes, bell peppers, and red onion into uniform small pieces, roughly 1/4 inch. Mince the jalapeño and garlic finely. Chop the cilantro.
Combine. In a large mixing bowl, add the tomatoes, corn, black beans, red bell pepper, orange bell pepper, red onion, jalapeño, cilantro, and garlic. Stir gently to distribute evenly.
Dress and season. Drizzle the lime juice and olive oil over the mixture. Add the salt and black pepper. Toss everything together until well coated.
Taste and adjust. Taste for salt and acid. Add an extra squeeze of lime or a pinch of salt if needed. If you want more heat, leave some jalapeño seeds in.
Chill. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. This allows the flavors to come together. Serve with tortilla chips, alongside grilled chicken, or as a topping for tacos.

Nutrition (per serving)

Colorful Summer Salsa — Something Fresh to Hold Us Until the Chiles Come Back