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Today’s Nibbles makes me jealous of today’s college students and their potential food and beverage careers. I talked with Carmen Pacheco, renowned for her wonderful mole sauce, about her groundbreaking engineering classes in coffee, chocolate and beer at CU Boulder.
Plus: A visit to Call Your Mother, award-nominated Boulder chefs and a series of CSA fairs.
Send information about Boulder County restaurants, food classes, events, tastings and tours to nibbles@boulderreportinglab.org.
— John Lehndorff
Maybe your collegiate life was different from what I experienced at McGill University, but my memory is crammed with coffee-fueled, early morning classes that seemed totally devoid of any connection to real life. They were supposed to lead me on a mythical career track.
I stumbled through various post-graduation employment diversions (like cooking at Boulder’s Alpha Phi sorority house) before finding a job that employed my three passions: writing, food and music.
While my wonderfully nerdy engineering friends have always been paid much better than me, I’ve felt bad for those stuck in jobs that lacked a little romance, that precious melding of the personal with the technical. (I’m not talking about you folks who are rocket scientists!)
After chatting with Carmen Pacheco, I’m jealous of the current generation of engineering students at CU Boulder. They get to take her three popular classes focused on coffee, chocolate and beer and earn a Food Engineering Graduate Certificate.
It is among the first food certificate programs of its kind offered in the United States.
Pacheco, a mechanical engineering faculty member at CU Boulder, inaugurated the food engineering certificate program in 2023, but the inspiration came from deep in her cultural background in the form of an iconic sauce.
In the local foodie world, Carmen Pacheco is legendary for Carmen’s Mole, the silky, flavor-layered Mexican sauce made with ground chilies, nuts, seeds, spices and chocolate she sold at the Boulder Farmers Market.
“I have always connected with food because it was one of the only things I could hold on to from my culture,” she says.
Growing up in Sonora, Mexico, Pacheco’s earliest memories involve the taste of roasted chilies, nopalitos – that’s cactus, and carne con chile.
“I was only like six years old and my job was to peel the roasted Anaheim peppers. I remember going to sleep with my fingers burning from the peppers,” she says.
Pacheco emigrated to the United States as a teenager, studied at the University of Arizona, worked for energy extraction companies, and taught at UC Davis and Columbia University. She joined CU Boulder as an adjunct faculty member in 2010.
“When we landed in Boulder, I discovered the Boulder Farmers Market and saw all the fresh tomatoes. I had developed a recipe for roasted tomato salsa that everybody loved and decided to offer it, but I soon realized that the salsa was a saturated market. But nobody was making mole sauce,” Pacheco says.
Rather than simply use her family recipe, Pacheco did what engineers do. “I needed to learn more about making mole, so I went to Oaxaca, which is the center of mole in Mexico. It was a deep dive into anthropology,” she says.
While Carmen’s Mole became a popular item, keeping the business running while mothering three children and teaching proved too challenging, especially during the Covid pandemic.
When Pacheco returned to full-time teaching at CU Boulder, a Design of Coffee class offered by a colleague at UC Davis sparked her interest.
“I pitched the idea of offering a class on coffee where our engineering students could learn science and engineering principles using coffee as a medium,” she says.
Pacheco says she wanted to create a class where science, engineering, sustainability and culture could intersect.
It seemed like a natural choice since coffee has always been infused into student life for generations, especially when annual projects are due and it is finals week.
“The class covers all the aspects of coffee. How coffee is brewed, how it is roasted, and how it is sourced through the supply chain,” she says.
Students in the class also learn where coffee is grown and the post-harvest processing it goes through. “The question is: How much are the people who grew the beans compensated for that cup of coffee you’re drinking?” Pacheco says.
The answer, she says, is that most of these small coffee growers see very little income from that latte.
“There is a financial disconnect in the relationship between the countries who grow coffee and cacao in very poor areas of Africa and Central America, and the main consumers: Europe and the United States,” she says.
The class of graduate and undergraduate students learns to roast and brew using diverse pieces of equipment and includes field trips. These include local companies like OZO Coffee Roasters and the historic Trident Booksellers to learn how to cup coffee – taste and smell it like a professional.
Eventually students use engineering principles to study coffee roasting.
Studying coffee grinders involves gauging particle size distribution, and coffee extraction is measured using a refractometer. That measures the total dissolved solids of students’ brews, which correlates directly with flavor intensity.
“They learn that when green coffee is roasted the 12 percent of moisture inside the bean evaporates. When that happens in the roaster you can hear the beans crack. You have to listen to the beans,” she says.
Students prepare their samples, roast them using various devices, grind them and answer questions about their process. “They have to record a lot of data when roasting — temperature versus time so they learn to engineer flavor,” Pacheco says.
At the end of the class, teams of students submit their energy scoring sheet with a liter of coffee for a blind tasting by fellow students.
“We measure kilowatt-hours of everything from the roasting to the way they heat the water. It’s a competition to see who can make the best-tasting cup of coffee using the least amount of energy,” Pacheco says.
CU’s Design of Chocolate class follows a similar trajectory and utilizes local resources including Boulder’s Piece, Love & Chocolate shop.
While students in the Design of Beer program study and experiment with brewing processes, they do not get to brew beer at CU.
According to Carmen Pacheco, these classes make sense in Boulder County where dozens of food and beverage products are manufactured every day, especially for the natural foods industry.
“We want to show students the career opportunities available in the food industry,” she says.
After considering the many variables studied in the Design of Coffee class, it is easy to understand why it is so hard to reproduce at home that perfect cup I enjoy at Boulder coffee shops, and why it is so expensive.
Good friends took me out for a New Year breakfast at Call Your Mother Deli, a small D.C.-born chain that recently opened a small shop at the 29th Street Mall.
The first thing I noticed was the extremely bright pink décor and the fact that the menu included only six bagel flavors, including plain and sesame (but no poppy) and za’atar.
We sampled sandwiches from a large roster of choices. The Thunderbird stacked maple chicken sausage, egg, American and cheddar cheeses and spicy honey on a maple salt-and-pepper bagel. It was a satisfying, though not spectacular variation on the breakfast sandwich theme.
The classic Royal Palm tucked smoked salmon, plain cream cheese, tomato, cucumber, red onion and capers on an everything bagel was nicely done, with an ample amount of fish.
The bagels themselves were adequate for the purpose.
The most surprising Call Your Mother item was the latkes, served as baked squares instead of pancakes with apple jam and sour cream. The onion-y potato flavor was spot on.
The deli pickles were top-notch but were not included in the sandwich price.
Lyons and Boulder chefs lead James Beard semifinal list
The James Beard Foundation’s recent list of semifinalists for its national dining awards includes two Boulder County favorites. Chef Theo Adley of Marigold in Lyons and chef Johnny Curiel of Cozobi Fonda Fina in Boulder and Denver’s Alma Fonda Fina were nominated in the Best Chef: Mountain category. (A question: Why does Texas get a category to itself?)
Other Colorado semifinalists include Kizaki in Denver (Best New Restaurant) and Poulette Bakeshop in Parker (Outstanding Bakery).
Opening
Slice House is open at 1805 29th St, Unit 1114. The chain is known for serving multiple pizza styles by the slice including New York-, Sicilian- and Detroit-style.
Closing
After serving Indian fare including a popular lunch and dinner buffet since 2012, Jaipur Indian Restaurant has closed at 1214 Walnut St.
CSA speed dating at Slow Food fairs
With CSAs — Community Supported Agriculture shares — you pay the farmer to grow your food for you for the season. In the past, detailed information on Boulder County farms offering shares was hard to come by, and shares were often sold out before disappointed consumers found out about them.
Slow Food Boulder County gathered farmers for the inaugural, highly successful Boulder County CSA Fair in 2025. It allowed shoppers to connect with farms offering diverse sizes and combinations of locally grown produce, flowers and, in many cases, honey, meat, eggs, bread and other local food products.
This spring, Slow Food Boulder County is staging three CSA fairs serving different parts of the county since consumers look for a farm close to home.
- Feb 1: Noon-4 p.m. Fritz Family Brewers, Niwot
- Feb 27: 4-8 p.m. Boulder Elks Lodge
- March 29: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Pioneer Elementary School, Lafayette
Among the participating Boulder County area farms are Aspen Moon Farm, Boulder Valley Honey, Crooked Roots Farm, Cure Organic Farm, Friends Farm, Golden Hoof, Masa Farm, Ollin Farms, Red Wagon Farm, Slupik Mini Farm, Sunflower Farm and Switch Gears Farm. Information here.
“Brewing espresso, unlike other methods of brewing coffee, is rocket science.” – From “Coffee Basics: A Quick and Easy Guide” (John Wiley & Sons) by Kevin Knox and Julie Sheldon Huffaker
Knox is a nationally known coffee expert and former Boulder resident.
Want more Boulder bites?
Fortezza Ristorante opens in Niwot with seasonal Northern Italian cuisine
Adam and Natalie Moore, who grew up in Longmont, bring their love of Northern Italian food and wine to the former Farow space. Continue reading…
Best One Yet: Boulder’s vegan ice cream truck wins fans with fresh, local flavors
Helen Williams’ plant-based scoops, made with seasonal ingredients from Boulder farmers, are turning her colorful truck into a must-visit summer stop. Continue reading…
Check out recent Nibbles newsletters
🥧 Boulder’s delicious secret: The origin of National Pie Day
🥚 ‘How good could it be?’ An egg salad odyssey in Boulder County