Groseclose and Chili

When people first meet Barclay Groseclose, their first thought is “what an interesting name,” but their second thought is “why does he like chili so much?” Students have been wondering about his chili-making habits, which makes it extraordinarily pressing to find out why he likes the dish so much.

Mr. Groseclose is the History Department head at Jemicy school and his room is appropriately decorated in maps. He became a teacher for several reasons. Mostly it was because he came from a family of teachers and educators. “My mother was teaching elementary level math and history at the time. And then my older sister became a teacher and I was really excited to jump into education just because I’ve always been interested in the learning process. It’s meaningful to me as an individual to learn but also see others learning and learn from that.” Unlike education, Mr. Groseclose does not share this chili obsession with his family but he still makes everyone eat it.

There is much speculation about the origin of chili. The most accepted theory is that during the 1700s chili was brought to San Antonio by immigrants from the Canary Islands. Even with this knowledge, there are copious amounts of other legends about chili’s origin. “I feel like the assumption would be that chili would be associated with Central America, but then obviously… it’s probably created somewhere very far away.” Mr. Groseclose guessed.

Mr. Groseclose has mentioned time and time again his love for chili. It is one of the things that many students at the school know about the History Department Chair. That’s why it shocked me when he said, “my favorite food? … chicken fingers.”

Mr. Groseclose then avoided answering why he likes chicken fingers over chili. The reason he makes chili so often though is “because it tastes better than other things and I can’t fry chicken fingers myself.”

We moved on from the chicken fingers fiasco to the more pressing questions, like how he creates his perfect chili. “So, I make a chili where I use short rib. You are really gonna drop a lot of money on the meat, but I make it with short rib and I cook it for a very long time. I get a nice chili paste made of your Adobo chilies and Chipotle chilies and Guajillo chilies. You toast them up, put them in the food processor and then just let it go in the oven for hours.”

For many chili lovers, spice means a lot to the dish. When asked about his spice tolerance Mr. Groseclose’s responded with “I’ll put a habanero in there every once in a while, but I don’t know. It’s perfect if maybe a little sweat appears on your brow as you’re eating it. Not that you can’t breathe, you got to be able to breathe.”

His final thoughts were that “the things that take a long time to cook are always the best things. Like I’m also doing a nice pot roast. Something like that where you just, you know, have a piece of meat going in the oven for four or five, six hours. Obviously, you can go longer, but I don’t do any barbecue smoking type things. Getting into how long it takes different vegetables and stuff to go, It’s just interesting. I want to put a little time and do it on a Sunday morning.”

Mr. Groseclose enjoys eating chili and maybe, more importantly, he enjoys the process of making it. He also enjoys educating others on history and showing current and past events to his students. He mentioned that he would maybe like a Jemicy chili cookoff, combining his work with his love for chili. Who knows, it may be a definite possibility in the future.

Right before our interview ended he said “Alright, I’ll change my favorite food to chili.”