In case you missed it, the Denver Summit — the Mile High City’s new NWSL team — made quite a debut today:
Denver, CO
Colorado chef transforms pozole from an ancient dish tied to family traditions — to a culinary passion
DENVER — Christmas just isn’t Christmas without the festive foods we grew up with, and for many Mexican Americans in Colorado, that means a steaming pot of pozole.
“These are the foods that I grew up craving,” said Chef Jose Avila Vilchez, who runs La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal in Denver’s Ballpark District.
Chef Vilchez grew up eating pozole in Mexico City. Every Thursday, he went with his mom and brother to enjoy two-for-one specials on the traditional soup.
But when he moved to Denver more than a decade ago, the pozolerias of his childhood were nowhere to be found.
Adam Hillberry, Denver7
“Red posole is a thing. So, in 100% of the Mexican restaurants here, that’s what you would find, a red pozole, but it was more for as a filler than as a main dish,” he said.
So, he opened La Diabla to serve up flavors many Coloradans haven’t tasted before.
While red pozole is a still a favorite, Chef Vilchez also studied recipes from across Mexico to make green, white and even black pozole.
“Our pozole negro, it’s a unique thing. That’s something that we invented,” said Chef Vilchez, who drew inspiration from a mole recipe popular in Yucatan. The black color comes from chilmole paste and charred rocoto chiles.
StarChefs
“The flavor is just amazing, even just the broth,” he said.
But even with these innovative and varied broths, at the heart of each dish is pozole’s ancient history.
“Pozole is a ceremonial dish,” Chef Vilchez said.
The Aztecs prepared pozole from corn — which they considered sacred — and human flesh sacrificed in religious ceremonies. After Spanish colonizers came to the Americas, the Mexica people stopped practicing cannibalism and replaced the meat in pozole with pigs and chickens.
Florentine Codex
As the pot boiled, the foam bubbling to the top gave the dish its name – the Nahuatl word for foam is “pozolli.”
“Even though we lost a lot of dishes that they used to make back in the day, the Mexica’s pozole still is like… a celebration,” Chef Vilchez said.
Hundreds of years later, the star ingredient in pozole remains the same: Corn. And Chef Vilchez uses the traditional process of nixtamalization to soften the kernels.
He sources high-quality corn and puts it in a pot of boiling water and cal (calcium hydroxide), which creates an alkaline solution that partially dissolves the corn’s hard skin and transforms the corn’s taste and texture.
Adam Hillberry, Denver7
“Once you have, like a mother pozole, per se, like a white broth, then you can add the salsa,” Chef Vilchez said.
He also adds in vegetables like thinly sliced radishes, cabbage, onion and lettuce, as well as meat like chicken or pork.
While Chef Vilchez serves pozole year-round, many people associate it with holidays.
In Mexico City, he grew up eating pozole on Mexican Independence Day, “especially if you have the red, the white and the green, just like the Mexican flag,” he said.
But here in Colorado, and in much of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, pozole is most popular around Christmastime.
As a homemade family meal, “you make the pozole, and that pot stays in the kitchen. It never leaves. You make it there. You let it do its thing, and once it’s ready, you start serving from the pot,” Chef Vilchez said.
Positive News
Christmas in Colorado is a time to unwrap gifts — and tamales
For Cristóbal Garcia — who was born in Valparaíso, Zacatecas, and then grew up in Colorado where his mother’s family has lived for eleven generations — pozole is very much tied to Christmas.
“During the holidays leading up to Nochebuena, or what we know here as Christmas Eve,” Garcia said his family celebrated Las Posadas with pozole and tamales.
“It’s about connecting with your family, connecting with your friends, connecting with your neighbors,” he said.
Since his father immigrated from central Mexico, his mother grew up in Colorado and his wife’s family is from coastal Sinaloa and northern Chihuahua, he’s enjoyed tasting many different recipes for pozole.
“My mother-in-law makes it with a green chile base, and she makes it with chicken sometimes instead of with pork,” he said.
While his sisters cook their Abuelita’s recipe for red pozole passed down for generations, and now shared with you in the recipe below:
For Garcia, who directs the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s First-Generation Initiatives, celebrating with these traditional foods is a chance for Coloradans to reflect on culture, identity and the state’s history.
“Sometimes people say, ‘ni de aquí, ni de allá‘ [not from here nor from there]. And I say, ‘soy de aquí y de allá‘ [I’m from here and from there],” he said.
Whether you cook your own pozole or savor a bowl from a restaurant like La Diabla, both Garcia and Chef Vilchez hope Coloradans will spend time communing over a flavorful meal.
Chef Vilchez said he’s been “blessed and super humbled” to receive awards like the James Beard and the Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand awards. But it means even more to him when customers say the food brings back warm memories of meals shared with their families.
“When you touch someone’s soul like that… it’s just a different connection on a personal level,” he said.
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Denver, CO
Game Thread: Denver Nuggets vs Golden State Warriors. March 29th, 2026. – Denver Stiffs
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Denver, CO
Colorado No Kings protests draw crowds across Denver, state
Carol Swan went to her first-ever protest in Denver’s Civic Center on Saturday dressed like Lady Liberty — a tiara of crystals and wire, a teal bedsheet-turned-dress that belonged to her late grandmother and a torch fashioned from aluminum foil.
The 74-year-old Lochbuie resident doesn’t like crowds. She normally protests alone every weekend on a busy street corner in the north metro area.
“But when we face our fears, they become less and less,” she said.
Swan was among tens of thousands of Coloradans who joined demonstrations across the state on Saturday to protest policies carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration as part of the nationwide “No Kings” movement.
No Kings organizers have criticized the administration’s use of masked federal agents for “terrorizing our communities,” the war in Iran and “attacks on our freedom of speech, our civil rights, our freedom to vote.”
Protesters filled Civic Center and spilled into surrounding streets Saturday as speakers led songs and chants and encouraged attendees to stand up for what they believed in.
Swan’s reason for driving into the city was simple: to be among the voices saying they don’t support the president.
“Trump swore at his inauguration that he would uphold the Constitution, and he’s done anything but that,” she said.
This is the third nationwide No Kings demonstration in less than a year, with previous protests in June and October also drawing tens of thousands of people onto the streets across Colorado. More than 70 protests were scheduled statewide Saturday, from Burlington to Steamboat Springs and Cortez to Fort Collins. No Kings organizers said nearly 4,000 demonstrations were planned nationwide.
Denver’s No Kings protest began on the steps of the Capitol shortly before noon, with attendees hoisting signs criticizing cuts to foreign aid and sharing expletive-laden messages against Trump. Several woman dressed as suffragettes in floor-length dresses, formal pantsuits and hats and carried signs or wore sashes that demanded “Votes for Women.”
Lifelong Denverite Christina De Luna, 29, was watching the crowd mill around a closed-off Broadway with a Mexican flag tied around her shoulders.
“I come from a family of immigrants, and I feel like this is a way of supporting them and taking a stance on the right side of history,” she said.
De Luna said she thinks the protests make a difference: They raise awareness about what’s going on in the U.S. and remind people to come together as a community.
“What’s going on in the world right now with immigrants and anyone who looks and sounds different, it’s not OK,” she said. “We should all be treated equally, and coming out here is about fighting for equality and basic human rights.”
Partners Diane Larson, 67, and Don Hiser, 72, drove from Parker to join the No Kings demonstration in downtown Denver. The couple said they were dismayed by what was happening in the country — that they lived through the Vietnam War and civil rights movement, and things had never been this bad.
“I think this is a start,” Hiser said. “You have to start somewhere, and if you don’t show up, you don’t change anything.”
“We care about what happens to people,” Larson added. “It’s really important to make sure everyone’s voices are heard, because we’re not standing idly by.”
Saturday was also the first time Ajani Brown, 33, attended a protest. Brown came to the park dressed as Captain America to pass out flyers with his union. He shared a hug and fist-bump with a passing Spider-Man.
“It feels like I’m doing something that’s a lot bigger than myself,” he said. “It’s about righteousness. It’s about freedom of expression.”
Demonstrators began marching through downtown about 1:30 p.m., with the crowds spanning city blocks. A video taken from a high-rise at 19th and Lincoln streets and shared on social media by Christine Piel shows marchers at 19th Avenue and Lincoln Street, with the crowd stretching south down Lincoln and out of view toward Civic Center.
Although the protest appeared to stay largely peaceful, Denver police officers used smoke cannisters and pepper balls to disperse a “small group of demonstrators” who blocked the road near 20th and Wazee streets, where police were staged to stop people from marching onto Interstate 25, agency officials said.
Police declared an unlawful assembly at 2:35 p.m. and used the smoke cannisters, switching to pepper balls when someone threw a cannister back at police. Eight people were arrested, and one person was arrested about two hours later for throwing things.
No Kings protests across the Front Range also saw significant crowds, including at least 3,000 people in Longmont.
Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos, founder of the Boulder-based group American Opposition, criticized Trump’s handling of the war with Iran and the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“If one man can ignore the law, detain people without due process and drag this country into a war without the consent of its people, then we are no longer living in a democracy,” he said. “We are living under a king, and we are here today because we refuse to accept that.”
More than 1,000 people gathered at Lincoln Park in downtown Greeley, where residents Kyleen and Kathy Gilliland carried a large flag as they marched with the group around the streets near the park.
“Our country is in distress,” Kyleen Gilliland said. “It’s going upside down because the rich are empowered and the little guy is left behind. And that’s not what America stands for.”
Times-Call reporter Dana Cadey and Greeley Tribune reporter Anne Delaney contributed to this report.
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Denver, CO
Purple Row After Dark: Is Denver the best sports town in the US?
The game ended on a 0-0 draw, but what a great day for Denver sports.
And that raises an interesting question: Is Denver the best sports town in the United States?
The sooner the Mile High City gets a WNBA team, the better.
Me, I think you can’t beat Denver for sports. But I’m willing to entertain other perspectives. Let us know in the comments!
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