2008 Woodie Awards
Professor spices up life with peppers
By Sheryl McGlory
Rocket Advertising Manager
Issue date: 10/14/05 Section: Life
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Dailey, born and raised in New Mexico, lives in Grove City and has been an associate professor of computer science at the university for six years now.
He said his love of hot peppers, or chiles as they're called in New Mexico, comes from being raised in the Southwest.
"New Mexico is sort of the epicenter of Hispanic culture in the U.S.," Dailey said. "Kids in New Mexico grow up eating hot Mexican foods."
He said peppers are so commonly used in New Mexico that the state is the only one in the nation to have an official question: Red or Green? The question, Dailey said, refers to the kind of chile sauce a restaurant patron would like to have on his food.
"Living in the Southwest meant I could never get away from Mexican food. I have probably eaten in over 1,200 different Mexican restaurants in at least 40 states," Dailey said.
Though Dailey and his family have lived in many states over the years, he has always taken his fondness for chiles with him.
When he was employed as an administrator at Williams College in Massachusetts, Dailey organized a "Chile Fest" at the time of the spring equinox so that students, faculty and staff could get together and share dishes made with chile products.
In the mid-80s, when he was working at Vassar College in New York, Dailey said he had one of his more memorable chile-related moments.
Dailey said he likes to make pasole, a dish from New Mexico, at least once a year around New Year's Eve.
"It's very traditional in pueblos on Christmas," he said.
The dish is made of grain, pork and red chiles, which have often been dried.
"To soften the dried peppers, you fry them in a little oil," Dailey said.
The New Year's of this particular incident, the fumes from frying the peppers became a bit too overwhelming.
"The fumes got so strong, we had to evacuate the house - the cat started coughing and I've never seen the cat cough," Dailey said. "The fumes were so strong, we couldn't breathe."
When he lived in Alaska, where hot peppers are rather hard to come by, Dailey said he packed a suitcase full of chile products each time he visited New Mexico and brought them back on the plane.
