Smells of home: Sam Steel Society brings green heat to DC-area alumni

Before Joshua Roth ’13 moved to Washington, D.C., four years ago, it was not uncommon for the NMSU graduate to spend hundreds of dollars traveling to New Mexico each summer to buy roasted green chile. 

All that changed in 2023 when NMSU’s Sam Steel Society resurrected a cherished tradition that brings New Mexico’s signature crop to Aggie alumni living near the nation’s capital. Now, Roth treks only about two miles from his home to a nearby grocery store on a Saturday in August to get his chile fix.

“It brings back a lot of memories, and I always look forward to it,” says Roth, a geologist for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

For several years until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the NMSU Alumni Association had hosted similar outreach events in the D.C. area, including chile roasts. After a brief hiatus, the Sam Steel Society picked up the torch in 2023. It began working with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the NMSU Foundation to bring back a D.C. event.

The teamwork morphed into a weekend affair called “The Fix,” the pinnacle of which is an all-day chile roast outside a Harris Teeter supermarket in Alexandria, Virginia. 

Even with a new name, the event retains the same sense of spirited camaraderie of its forebears. And, of course, it’s still all about chile, and bringing the sights and smells of the world’s most prolific pepper to New Mexico expats.

“Being in the nation’s capital, it’s great to have this connection to Las Cruces,” says Jason Crawford ’05, a veterinary corps officer for the U.S. Army, who has a long history of buying chile from NMSU in D.C. “It’s like getting a little piece of home while we’re out here.”

The 2024 event was such a success that the Sam Steel Society sold and roasted its entire allotment of chile, about 2,300 pounds.

“It was wonderful to reconnect with our D.C. Aggie alumni. Seeing their smiles and watching them breathe in the aroma of roasting chile,” says Jennifer Ryder Fox ’89, president of the Sam Steel Council. “We just knew they were smelling home.”