On a weekday afternoon Dick Brown, Chairman of the USS New Mexico committee of the Navy League is giving a presentation about the nuclear-powered submarine to an audience at the Branigan Cultural Center in Las Cruces.
Brown gives these updates to people all over the state to raise awareness and funds for the crew of the USS New Mexico.
“We do things for the crew that the Navy cannot do. One of those things is that we bring crew members to New Mexico so that they understand the state a little bit better. They learn about the geography, the history, and the culture. We usually have about five or six sailors about twice a year,” says Brown.
According to Brown, the crew has learned much about New Mexico and the submarine also has a southwest decor throughout the ship that is hard to miss.
“There are pictures of Carlsbad Caverns, The Balloon Fiesta, and White Sands. The bunk curtains have a Southwest-Native American design, including the pilot, and co-pilot chairs in the diving station,” says Brown.
Another part of the USS New Mexico that shares something in common with the state is the galley, or kitchen. It is named after La Posta de Mesilla, a popular Southern New Mexico restaurant housed in a centuries-old adobe building in the town of Mesilla.
Navy Captain Mark Prokopius, a former commander of the USS New Mexico shares the story about a contest that led to the naming of the submarine’s galley.
“When we decided that we were going to name our galley we put it up to the crew and there were several restaurants that were in the running to be named,” says Cpt. Prokopius.
Tom Hutchinson owns and operates La Posta de Mesilla with his wife Jerean. He is a former Navy Captain and aviator and actually worked with submarines during his time in the Navy.
“They sent several of their Mess specialists down here and trained with us for two to three days, took all that information after visiting all of the establishments back to Virginia, visited with the Skipper and the final vote and tally was that they would name their galley after La Posta de Mesilla,” says Hutchinson.
The crew decided to name it La Posta Abajo del Mar (La Posta under the sea). Captain Prokopius says that restaurant in Mesilla really represented what the crew was looking for.
“When I sold this to the crew and told them about La Posta being a family-owned, Tom Hutchinson being a former Navy captain, and a family oriented restaurant; It really seemed like a perfect fit,” says Cpt. Prokopius.
After the contest ended the crew's culinary specialists were sent to the restaurant to learn recipes. Hutchinson and his employees gave the crew members a firm understanding of the restaurant’s cuisine.
Central-east Mexico gave birth to the domesticated chili pepper — now the world's most widely grown spice crop — reports an international team of researchers, led by a plant scientist at the University of California, Davis.
Results from the four-pronged investigation — based on linguistic and ecological evidence as well as the more traditional archaeological and genetic data — suggest a regional, rather than a geographically specific, birthplace for the domesticated chili pepper. That region, extending from southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca to southeastern Veracruz, is further south than was previously thought, the researchers found.
The region also is different from areas of origin that have been suggested for common bean and corn, which were presumably domesticated in Western Mexico.
The study findings will be published online April 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as part of a series of research papers on plant and animal domestication.
While red and green chili peppers still sit on top of the list as New Mexico's favorite food crop, commercial production fell sharply last year according to a USDA year-end crop production report and confirmed by the latest crop statistics from the New Mexico Department of Agriculture.
The official report indicates fewer acres of chili peppers planted and harvested in 2013, down about 16 percent from the previous year. USDA says 65,000 tons of New Mexico chili peppers were produced in 2013 compared to nearly 78,000 tons in 2012. Over a decade ago New Mexico chili pepper farmers were harvesting over 100,000 tons of green and red peppers each fall.
The new seeds are inconspicuous, filling a handful of 1.5-pound coffee bags and tucked at the bottom of a shelf in the Seed Vault.
The repository — kept between 34 degrees and 40 degrees Fahrenheit — holds decades of seeds grown and developed by New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute.
On that bottom shelf is the institute’s newest star: NuMex Sandia Select, a new variety, previously used as red chile, that can now be used as green chile.
“There’s been a lot of buzz about this, so I think it will be very popular,” said Danise Coon, an agricultural research scientist at the Chile Pepper Institute. “People have been wanting a new Sandia variety for a long time.”
Seed packets are now on sale for $5 at the Chile Pepper Institute. Proceeds benefit NMSU’s Endowed Chile Pepper Research Chair campaign.
Local company Biad Chili will also sell roasted NuMex Sandia Selects, maybe as early as this August, and seeds beginning in 2015 or 2016, co-owner Chris Biad said.
Word got out about the upcoming variety a few years back, and people have been calling about it, asking when the seed will be released, Coon said.
“I get excited about it because I think it’s an improvement,” Biad said.
