Friday is Cinco de Mayo.  Do you know what that means?

If you replied, "that the Applebee's next to the on-ramp had better pull down all those remaining 'St. Patrick's Day' and 'Kiss Me I'm Irish' streamers," you'd be wrong (although they probably should).

It means that you and your hombre had better go stock up on some cervezas, hermanita.
 
Everybody knows Negra Modelo and Corona, and everybody knows the differences between them: namely, that Negra Modelo is for frat boys, Corona for sorority girls. But here are four very-slightly-off-the-beaten-path options:

Bohemia: The Rey of Beers, this smooth, medium-bodied pilsener has been brewed since 1900. It's named after the famous beer-brewing region of what is now the Czech Republic.

Pacifico: The top-selling beer in Mexico, Pacifico is a pilsner. American travelers to the Baja Peninsula have brought back a fondness for this golden, full-flavored beer.

Tecate: Medium-bodied. Never in bottles. If you're a fan of the can, Tecate (teh-kah-tay) is your beer. 

Dos Equis: A Vienna-style lager. The name translates to "Two X's" or XX. Not to be confused with XXX, that movie with Vin Diesel. Watch XXX only after several Dos Equis.

 

I'm not a big beer drinker. In fact, I'm not a beer drinker, period. Beer has always tasted extremely bitter to me, and I had it in my head that beer is very very bad for the belly (whereas wine and cocktails are diet drinks, right?).

But this weekend, I finally developed a little bit of a taste for beer. I tried several different ones (five to be exact) just to prove to myself that all beers do not, indeed taste like the same nasty dirty dishwasher that I thought. My personal, introductory tasting notes:  

• Tecate and Corona were good, and in LA, these are very familiar beers. I certainly liked the fact that we squeezed lime wedges into them. Without the lime, though, both were just okay. Now that I've tasted it with the lime, I don't think I could drink it plain.
• Samuel Adams was a little too bitter for me and i couldn't finish the bottle without squeezing lime into it. What? Is that wrong? Why can't I squeeze a lime into a Sam Adams?
• Pilsner-Urquell is a beer from the Czech Republic, and I didn't know how to pronounce it. It was even more bitter and stinky than the Sam Adams. I think I am learning that I don't like beers that come in green bottles.
• Granted, I'm years behind most people in the beer drinking evolution, so yes, I am still on what most people start with - Miller Genuine Draft, or as we beer drinkers say, MGD. This was the winner of the weekend and what I will be drinking during the Super Bowl.

While in Colorado a few months ago, some friends from New Mexico paid me and my traveling companions a visit. Upon arriving, our friends produced a one-gallon freezer bag of green chili, threw it on the stove and fed us all. We ate and drank and ate some more. Impressed with the chili, I tried to get the recipe out of my guests. I can't say that they were secretive about techniques and ingredients. They'd just gotten a head start on their drinking, so the nuances of the recipe were a little hazy. Despite not having home-grown Anaheims, as my friends did, I've come close to replicating their green chili. What follows is more a method than an exact recipe.

[Photo: Nick Vagnoni]