I was grateful this afternoon when my sister texted.

She had come across a good deal on steaks earlier, and wondered if I’d like to join her and her family for dinner.

Steaks? Umm, yeah.

“Bring your chiles.” The ones that had just come off the plants in my backyard.

Yes, ma’am.

After work, I stopped at home to change clothes, to check on the cats, and to pick up the chile peppers. And off I went.

When I got to her house, the grill was hot and the steaks were searing.

“Here are the peppers.”

She threw some on the open side of the grill.

We smelled steaks. We smelled peppers.

When the steaks were done, I put the rest of the peppers from the plastic bag I had brought over onto the grill, and turned the ones that were already there. When the peppers were roasted well enough, we removed them from the grill and put them in a large ziplock bag and zipped it shut to let the peppers sit and steam.

Fresh chile peppers smell uniquely delicious roasting, and these peppers, on the plants two days ago, popped as the water inside of them found cracks to escape from.

We have it down now pretty well. Let the peppers roast until the skin is glossy and black in spots. The outer skin of a well-roasted pepper easily slides off of the meat of the pepper like a sheath from a sword.

We ate a fine dinner- steaks, corn on the cob, French bread with garlic and butter, canteloupe. And after dinner, I enjoyed a slice of peach pie my sister had made from peaches from a neighbor’s tree. She said the peaches were a bit tart, but when I ate the pie, they tasted sweet enough, and the peaches were just right in softness and texture. Topped with vanilla ice cream, the pie was a fantastic chaser to the meal.

After dinner, we skinned the chiles, and like we hoped, they skinned easily. The chiles smelled aromatic but not overly hot, so we left the seeds in the meat, and I chopped them up into fine bits. We then put the chile into snack size ziplock bags which can easily be frozen and then thawed later and used as a single serving accessory to most any meal. The small bag servings make chile allocation easy when cooking.

Tonight, our small pile of peppers made 6 servings of green chiles. Not bad at all.

That ole grill. It sure made the evening rich tonight.