In the past, I would have never thought that I’d be thinking about Marie Sharp’s and Blair’s hot sauces in the same train of thought but as of Saturday, my list of favorite hot sauces just got turned upside down. The package arrived on Friday and I had Laura bring it to me when she picked me up for my birthday dinner, but I forgot the bottle in the car and had to wait until the following day to try it out. Which turned out to be even better because we decided to cook up some tacos for the group. We went to the market early on Saturday and I got some chicken which I promptly threw into some Pilarcita’s marinade – a few hours (and beers) later, the chicken was ready for the grill and we had the taco bar fully stocked.

Ingredients: Habanero Chili Pods, Naga Jolokia, Vinegar, Hawaiin Red Salt. (typo on the label with the spelling of Hawaiian)

I cracked open the bottle and took a big whiff – pure peppery goodness. My mouth started to water at just the scent of the sauce and I eagerly poured some on my unsuspecting taco. Consistency – combined with the pure pepper flavor, the consistency of this sauce really reminds me of a good bottle of Marie Sharp’s – but with better flavor. I’ve always regarded Marie Sharp’s as my go to habanero hot sauce (for the basics) but now, I can’t fathom using Maries when I’ve got a bottle of Pure Death around.

It’s thick enough to hold a point

Heat wise – it’s not that hot when you compare it to the likes of After Death, Mega Death ect… but it’s got a good notch of fire power. The habaneros get you straight away and set the stage for the building heat of the Nagas – about 3-4 bites into your food and you’ll start to sweat and your eyes will being to water. No hiccup alarms here – just a nice heady burn with a good bit of afterburn. I’ve already killed 1/2 the bottle and in writing this, I’m staring at the remaining bottle and pondering it’s lunch time application uses.

I would highly recommend this sauce to any chilihead (new or old) and to the HSB regulars, I recommend you buy it by the case.

Gardner Resources, INC.
Highlands, NJ 07732
www.extremefood.com

Eat hot sauce, lose weight?

How to lose weight and add some spice to your meals.
By Dee Van Dyk (canadianliving.com)

Baltimore-based orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Spiro Antoniades hit rock bottom in 2004 when his own doctor told Antoniades he was starting to become diabetic.

“I panicked and took a whole week off work, which for me was a big deal,” says Antoniades. “I went to the medical library and studied everything that I could think of.”

Like many other people struggling with excess weight, Antoniades had tried other diets before, but without success. “And I was exercising three or four times a week pretty vigorously, but not enough.”

The answer came in a bottle. A hot sauce bottle. Antoniades began to use hot sauce to punish his bad behaviours. “I knew that hot sauce, hot peppers and chilli peppers suppressed my appetite and kept me from overeating,” he says.

“The hot sauce diet was, for me, the catalyst. I already understood everything I was doing wrong, but even though I consider myself a very disciplined and smart person, I couldn’t control myself.”

A year after starting his hot sauce diet, Antoniades had lost 70 pounds and put his personal dieting experience into an inspiring and humorous book called The Hot Sauce Diet: A Journey of Behavior Modification (iUniverse, 2006).

The science of hot sauce
Hot sauce works to advance weight loss in three ways, says Antoniades:

1. It’s an appetite suppressant.

2. It makes you thirsty, which makes you drink more water and therefore eat less.

3. Hot sauce is toxic and can make your face flush and feel uncomfortable. This discomfort creates a situation of aversive conditioning.

Antoniades took a shot of hot sauce when he was experiencing abnormal eating behaviours that included a feeling of being way too hungry. The hot sauce shot would curb his hunger.

Is it as simple as it sounds?
No, says Antoniades. He maintains that you have to know yourself and the wrong behaviour for his method to be successful. Antoniades recognized early in his own weight loss process that one of his weak periods was after work. “I’d come home starving and I’d eat the whole family dinner before we even sat down at the dinner table, and then I’d eat another dinner.”

Antoniades employed his “pushback” — one teaspoon of hot sauce in a glass of tomato juice — to calm his appetite, pique his thirst and cause him to drink water. He found that, by using his pushback, he was able to eat dinner normally.

At work, Antoniades would do the same at lunch, liberally lacing his soup with hot sauce. Then, using a stopwatch, he timed himself with a goal of taking 10 minutes to finish his soup. “That’s something else I’ve learned from the behavioural psychology research. It should take you about 20 minutes to eat a meal. My meals used to average 30 seconds.”

How to make the hot sauce diet work for you
1. Count your calories and know the details of your diet.
2. Slap the Angry Hungry Man (or Woman) with some hot sauce.
3. Let the sauce work, and drink a lot of water to remove the burn.
4. Eat a balanced, sensible diet.

Dangers of consuming too much hot sauce?
“The active ingredient in hot sauce is capsaicin,” says Antoniades. “It’s toxic, but you have to drink about 1.5 litres.”

What about ulcers? Antoniades cites a study where rats subjected to lethal doses of capsaicin died from respiratory failure and, upon autopsy, no ulcers were found. But what if you’re a human? “I was worried about ulcers when I started the diet, but I found nothing happened. In fact, there’s no scientific evidence that spicy food or substances cause ulcers.”

Whew, what a busy two weeks it’s been! Just got back from getting one of our dogs from the vet – she tried to jump the fence after a squirrel but got caught on the fence – she’s fine, just recovering with stitches now – but it was a less then restful night for us. Easter came and went – we had a BBQ with a bunch of friends over – I don’t remember the majority of the evening, so it must have been good. Cooked up some ribs and wings for Easter brunch – not traditional, but well received.

On the garden front – it’s t-minus 2 weeks till pepper time! I’ve confirmed the deliver with ChilePlants.com and the peppers will be arriving soon. I’ve been spending my weekends outside – planting & mulching our front and back yards.

So far, the garden has been planted with:
5 Cilantro plants
2 Purple Basil Plants
Tons of Sweet Basil (started from seed)
3 Garlic Chive Plants
3 Dill Plants
3 Greek Oregano Plants
6 Watermelon Plants
2 Cantaloupe Plants
6 Cucumber Plants
Sweet Corn (seeds)

Herbs & Misc.

Tomatoes:
2 Rutgers Select
4 Roma Plum
2 Brandywine
2 Super Select

Tomatoes

Pre-Fence

This last Saturday, I got up early and headed out to Lowes to pick up a garden gate – I had previously tried a dinky wire mesh one but the dogs both slipped right through it, so I had to upgrade. This gate system was super easy to install and fairly cheap. And most importantly, it can withstand the soccer ball that the dogs play with and they can’t fit through the uprights. Plus it prevents they from trouncing all through the beds.

Post-Fence

Lemon & Lime Trees

In other gardening news – I also planted a Meyers Lemon tree and transplanted our Mexican Lime tree. It had been getting run over by the dogs and has not yet given us a single lime, but with the move to a raised container – it’s already flowering and looks promising. Once the peppers come in, I’ll just need to buy some onions and I’ll have everything I need for some great salsa (may even try growing some).

Ingredients: Tomato concentrate made from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice, Onion powder, Natural Flavoring. All with a Drip Free Valve!

I used to teach high school history, so when I was walking by this bottle in the grocery store I just stopped: Here was a sauce that’s been made since 1869, a piece of Americana, so I just had to grab it. I’ll admit I was more drawn to the deep red color of it, and the handy convenience of a “drip free” valve (a genius innovation whose time is way over due). But I have to tell you, after so much anticipation and getting this sauce home, I was more than a little disappointed.

When I got home, I took out me trusty tasting spoon and just poured it on. This sauce is thick, thick like mustard, and it held well to the spoon. The first whiff I got when I smelled it was a combination of sugar and vinegar. Skeptical, I poured on, taking advantage of the Stay Clean Cap/Drip Free Valve. Now here was a shining light: You can use this cap to write messages, or draw funny faces to entertain your kids. But the real beauty of this cap is that with the right amount of pressure you can send streams of this sauce up to eight feet long. Which is what I found out after I tasted this stuff.

If you’ve ever read my reviews in the past then you know I’m a Hardened Habbie Head, the guy who once ate a fresh habanero for a jar of mayonnaise (don’t ask, alcohol was involved). Long story short, I like my sauces hot. This sauce wasn’t the case. True traditional ketchup (kats-up, or sometimes spelled cats-chup) is a tomato based, heavily seasoned sauce that is thought to have originated from India. The initial flavors that I got from this were tomato, then sugar, then vinegar, with a hint of salt. So I took another taste of my spoon and tasted, again, tomato (though more ripe), sugar, vinegar, and followed by salt. No onion, and certainly no spice, as listed on the label. What the Hell?

Now I understand that some producers are out there making milder sauces for the hot sauce newbies, but this is a step beyond ridiculous. Granted, this did taste ok on French fries, and pretty good on onion rings, but I had to add other hot sauces to this just to get a meager kick from it. What are they trying to push here? I don’t know, but my kids put this stuff on just about everything, and my wife says it tastes pretty good on hash browns. I guess each their own (but that doesn’t always make them right). So on to my Five Point Scale.

Appearance: 4-Certainly a good looking sauce in a nice, very squeezy plastic bottle. Again, with the right amount of pressure you can get streams of up to (but not limited to when using a Ford Taurus) eight feet. I also like the blood red color.

Aroma: 3-Almost like tomatoes, except I smell a lot of sweetness also. There is lingering vinegar when I sniff really hard. Oh wait, scratch that one. We just had our kitchen cleaned (tomato stains).

Taste: 3- If it wasn’t for the ingredients list, I’d swear I was tasting just tomatoes and sugar. Albeit red ripe tomatoes-look at the color again-but a little too sweet for my veteran palate.

Heat: 0-I try took look for an upside in everything, even the Police Academy movies, but I’m sorry, this sauce sucked for heat. My two year old daughter often enjoys a little taste or two of hot sauces, but this one she just ate up like it was nothing. What does that tell you? I’d get more heat if I were to lick an ice cube.

Overall: 3.3- For a sauce that’s been around since 1869, you would think these people had a clue as to what they were doing. But they don’t. It’s a decent sauce, for what it’s worth ($1.89 for 20 ounces), and you can buy it anywhere. I guess this would be the ultimate sauce for newbies. And contrary to popular belief, the “57” that adorns this bottle is not the 57th attempt at making it. No, the truth in the matter was in 1870 Heinz founder H. J. Heinz predicted that there would someday be 57 states in America that his sauce would be sold and bought in. Little piece of trivia for ya. So until next time, treat every meal like it was your last!

H.J. Heinz Co., L.P.
Pittsburgh, PA. 15222
www.heinz.com

BLAIR & ZAKK WYLDE!

Dear ChiliPal,

So many things have been going on in Death Sauce Land over the last few months.
So much in fact that I could not explain everything in just one e-Mail. Over the next couple of weeks I will be sending out several additional messages covering many exciting topics.

Today I want to announce that Blair’s and Zakk Wylde have partnered in a unique line of “Berserker Brand” Hot Sauces. As I am sure many of you know Zakk Wylde has been The lead axe man With Ozzy Osbourne for almost 20 years and has an incredible following of millions of fans from around the world. I am very honored to be working with him directly on this project and was psyched to learn he has been a long time Death Sauce fan, not to mention a fellow Jersey boy. We will be launching 4 unique sauces in June 2008. These sauces will be available via www.extremefood.com and www.zakkwylde.com, Ozzfest, As well as many other major retailers around the globe that will be announced soon.

Take a look at the prototype of the label below as well as a message directly from Zakk. Again this is a very exciting event for Blair’s and we look forward to millions of new chiliheads joining us in using and collecting both Zakk’s sauces as well as my reserves. Enjoy the ride!

FEEL ALIVE!

Your ChiliPal,
PS: Please note it has just come to my attention that several hundred emails have been sent to me and were buried in my spam folder. If you did not get a response, please send and questions or comments to blair@extremefood.com and I promise to respond.
FROM ZAKK WYLDE:

“When it came time to choose a company to introduce a recipe of flavors geared towards my fan base, the Berserkers, only one company was considered: Blair’s.
So I made the call right away.
Blair¹s Death Sauce has taken first position in my rack of flavors for sometime, and it¹s been my go-to sauce for anything I’ve cooked, grilled or recently killed that needs that extra punch. The thought that I could build on that Blair’s tradition, and bring it to my audience is huge. And it’s getting bigger since we decided one flavor is not enough- so we’re going with 4 flavors to launch.”

ABOUT ZAKK WYLDE:

Zakk
Wylde’s tenure as Ozzy Osbourne’s axe slinging side-kick has brought him fame in front of a large audience over the past two decades. However, it’s Wylde’ rock band Black Label Society (BLS) that has brought him notoriety amongst a hard core crowd of music lovers known in Black Label’s world as Berserkers. The fans, who have Black Label Society chapters around the globe, wear their BLS colors with great pride. A musical gang of beer drinkers, they rally under the mantra SDMF, which means Strength Determination, Merciless, Forever. “It’s a tribute to family and God” according to Wylde. From 1999′s “Sonic Brew” album to the current “Shot To Hell” release, one thing is certain- Black Label Society’s recorded output has never disappointed rock loyalists.

Look for a new BLS album in 2009.

For additional information on Black Label Society please see:
www.blacklabelsociety.com

for
additional information on Zakk Wylde, see: www.zakkwylde.com

Black Label
Society is:
Zakk Wylde
Vocals, Guitar, Piano

Nick “Evil Twin” Catanese
Guitar

John “JD” DeServio
Bass

Craig Nunenmacher
Drums
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Extreme Food
PO Box 363
Highlands, New Jersey 07732