Each year's family vacation involves a bucket list of sorts, invariably and inevitably.  Once we've decided on a general destination, the six of us each make our own little bucket list of things we want to see or do while we're there.  It's a big feat trying to meet everyone's desires, no doubt about that; especially since there's another list to take into consideration.  It's the unwritten and unspoken bucket list.  It's the one we all know by heart.   And there's just one thing on it: find the best food there and eat it!  We repeat this one thing over and over and over again even after we've checked it off.  It may sound trite, but it's not.  It's all about using your gut and sniffing out the best routes to that final food mecca stop. 

Each year my family and I go on vacation for one to two weeks.  Part of the time we spend adventuring to somewhere new, and the other part we spend revisiting somewhere we've already been to. 

This past spring, we spent a week and a half exploring the culinary life of New Mexico (a state we've passed through but never really got to enjoy).  We came across quite a few savory surprises.  And if you expected that New Mexican food is only about foods like tacos and enchiladas, you'd be mistaken; not to say that you won't find the most tempting authentic Mexican foods.  What we didn't know was everything else that was in store for us. 

We came to discover a whole new world of culinary delights that revolved more around ingredients than it did about food names.  In fact we came to find out that much of culinary New Mexico is about locally grown and harvested indigenous foods from organic, sustainable, and artisan farms. And we also came to find that just about anywhere you eat, you will always find green chillis.