Source: Telegraph.co.uk
An amateur chef died the day after eating a “superhot” chilli in a bet with his friend over who could make the hottest dish, an inquest heard.

Andrew Lee, 33, suffered heart failure the morning after he ate the chilli.

Toxicology tests are now being carried out to see if the fork lift truck driver suffered a fatal reaction to the dish or whether anything else contributed to his death.

Mr Lee, of Edlington, Doncaster was apparently in perfect health and had just passed a medical at work, the opening of the Doncaster hearing was told.

Cooking was one of his main interests and he went to his girlfriend Samantha Bailey’s house to make a chilli.

His father John Lee told the inquest: “He had a bet with Samantha’s brother who could make the hottest chilli then went back to her house to stay.”

Mother-of-four Miss Bailey called the emergency services to her home nine days ago.

Police officers were called to the house after receiving reports of a man suffering a cardiac arrest and Mr Lee was found lying on the floor.

Paramedics failed to revive him and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

A full post-mortem examination is underway and further inquiries are being carried out.

Deputy Doncaster coroner Fred Curtis granted a burial order and adjourned the inquest for further evidence.

From the Houston Chronicle

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Men, women and children of all ages stepped right up and twirled together twine and chile pods at the New Mexico State Fair, trying to create the world’s largest chile ristra.
Now they hope Londoners appreciate the chiles as much as they do.

In five hours and 45 minutes Sunday, the participants used a whopping 3,250 pounds of red chile pods to create a ristra spanning 157.7 feet, said New Mexico Department of Agriculture spokesman Doug Rains.

The New Mexico Chile Commission and the Agricultural Department followed Guinness World Record guidelines in creating the ristra and will submit their documentation to Guinness headquarters in London for record consideration. Rains said he did not know how long it would take for Guinness to respond.
“God only knows. When you’re dealing with people in London that don’t have a clue what a ristra is, it’s an uphill battle,” Rains said with a laugh.

A ristra is the traditional method for drying red chile peppers. The pods are tied with string in an overlapping design and hung to dry before being used in sauces and dishes.

Guinness doesn’t have a category for a chile ristra, but state agriculture and chile commission officials are asking Guinness to establish one.

(getting some of these re-posts out of the way)

This is a recipe that we picked up in our local supermarket (HEB) - where they demo a lot of the products in the store. The original recipe calls for ground beef, but I made this for our friend who was house sitting for us while we took care of family things in California and she only eats chicken, so I substituted the beef for diced chicken and it turned out beautifully. This recipe is super easy and can be made ahead of time and heated up when your ready for it to be served.

Ingredients:
1lb rotini pasta
1lb EZ cheese (velveeta)
1 cup heavy cream
1 large bag pre-shredded colby jack
1 32oz jar Green Chili Stew
1 bag pre-cooked diced chicken

Directions:
Boil pasta until soft - drain & set aside.
Cube Velveeta
In the pot that was used to boil the pasta, heat the chili stew, chicken and add in the cheeses (all the velveeta and 1/2 the colby jack) until melted.
Mix the pasta & the sauce & the heavy cream - transfer entire mixture to a baking pan.
Top with remaining colby jack and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes until topping is melted. Serve.

First - thanks to all the chileheads that tried to call/email last week. We ended up not having power for 7 days (Friday to Friday) - fun, fun, fun.

As much as I tried to keep folks informed - I know a lot more were left out, so here’s the run down of what’s been going on and what’s upcoming.
- Thursday 9/11: Had to evacuate Houston shortly after an early morning client meeting (2 hours stuck in traffic with other evacuees)
- Friday 9/12: Spent the day getting ready for the hurricane - bought a generator at Home Depot on a whim & boarded up all the house windows. Settled in and waited for it to hit.
- Saturday 9/13: Woke up to no power and no way to leave the house. Our street was blocked on both directions due to downed trees. Fortunately, no trees fell in our yard - though as you can see from the pics, there was plenty of debris. We went out in the downpour in the late afternoon and helped the neighbors clear the trees and clean the street for cars to pass. Since I was soaked, I jumped in the pool and hauled out the largest branches that had landed in there.
- Sunday 9/14: Got with with a wind/thunder storm Sat. night - woke up to even more debris and now downed fences. Spent the day in the rain, cleaning the yard and picking shit up. All told we wound up with about 20 bags of pine cones & pine needles, a huge amount of pine branches and lots of random stuff that was dumped in our yard by the winds.
- Monday 9/14: Fired up the generator and then immediately realized we would need to find more gas soon. Drove 40 miles and waited 3 hours in line for $30 worth. Great…
- Tuesday 9/15: Fed up with that mess, we got up at 5am and went searching for more gas. Found Sam’s Club open and waited an hour for $40 worth. Getting better.
- Wednesday 9/16: Still no power - power company is now telling us it could be 2-3 weeks before we get power. Sweet. We decided to get out of the house and drove 80 miles roundtrip to the nearest town without gas buying limits - bought enough to get us through a week. Finally bought a lan phone to get calls on (cordless doesn’t work with no power doh!) and started connecting with the outside world again.
- Thursday 9/17: No power, but no there’s trucks in the area. Cell phones still aren’t working 100% and no businesses are open. Our local market is turned into a FEMA zone, so now we can’t get groceries - good thing we’re stocked up. Buddy of mine who lives 20 miles north of us gets power.
- Friday 9/18: Finally, my office is open again - after minor wind damage and some flooding. Laura & I drive into Houston to see life downtown and I spend a few hours catching up on missed work. We get back and our power is on! After some celebratory dancing, plenty of time was spent plugging everything back in, re-programing and getting everything back online. Whew.
- Saturday 9/19: Normalcy starting to return - power still out for friends, so we volunteer our house as a staging zone and spend time getting caught up on work. I finally had time to get in the garage and work on the truck (with light). Also made time to visit a friends brand new baby in the hospital - which fortunately got power 2 days before.
- Sunday 9/20: Okay - normal life is here again. Our favorite Thai place is open again so we made sure to order extra spicy food and settled in to finally relax.
- Monday 9/21: First full day back at the office. Holy crap traffic is a nightmare. What normally takes 40 minutes one way took almost 2 hours. Started to think about getting this blog post done in the evening, but on the way home I get a panicked call from Laura - her car won’t start. Great. I play Mario cart on the freeway and make it home in pretty record time for such shitty traffic - drop her off so she can teach her class and then come back home to assess the car. No big problem here - battery is dead. Went to walmart and picked up a new one and installed it - she’s back in action.

All in all - you would think a week without power would be relaxing, but it was anything but. No power means no air - which in turn means no sleep. Work is backed up and most of our clients are out of the state, which means little visibility/understanding of the downtime - so of course everything is a priority. But if that’s the worst that I can complain about after such a destructive hurricane, then I’m a lucky man.

Now back to the HSB stuff. Before the hurricane hit, I was working on changing things over to the new server. Unfortunately it looks like several posts and comments were lost. Most posts can be manually recovered and will be as time goes on. The new design is on hold due to damage to the designers office - but once they are back in business, we’ll get that rolled out. In the meantime, I’m going to get some work in during the evenings to make sure all the bugs are worked out and the majority of the plugins are back and functioning properly - if you have any issues, please drop me an email at nick.lindauer@gmail.com.

Dear Chilipal,

It is with the greatest Honor for me to Announce the Pre-Release Of The All New Death Sauce Line-up, New Labels, New Boxes, Ultra Death Sauce, Not to mention, This is the First Batch Of sauce that Contains Habanero and Jolokia Chilis From our Very Own Pepper Farm just North of the Equator. For the First time ever, I am offering a Mega Pre-Release Special for the Hard Core Chilihead. A First Run Set including all 9 bottles of My Kick your Ass Hot Death Sauce Line up, That I personally cooked, Bottled, Labeled, Sealed and blessed with all every ounce of Karma in my Soul.

I made a Total of 36 Pre-Production Bottles of Each sauce. I Kept and Use half a dozen of each for myself, friends and Family and I am making the remaining 30 Sets available to my Chilipals around the World. Each Label and Awesome New Box is Signed and Numbered, Plus I am adding in a Secret Special Bottle that only you will receive. So it’s Ten Bottles Total. How Much you ask??? $10,000. Per Set. Ok, Only F-in With ya. And yes, I am aware The Death Sauce Phenomenon has brought in over $12,000 for a single rare bottle. But that’s from resellers; Bless um all I say. So here’s the deal, direct from the Source (That’s Me) and Never available again, $499 Per Set, I know you say “Blair that’s only $50 Per Bottle”. Yep, So Good For you, Re-Sell um if you choose to or better yet Keep um as the rare of rarest I have ever done. Your Call, Just Enjoy um. I have so much more to share but that’s it for now. Order at extremefood.com

Your chilipal,
Blair
PS And Yes a Very Limited Halloween Reserve will be announced soon.

Quick update here.

As most of us know by now that Galveston and Houston took a direct hit from Ike (as well as outlying areas). Although the physical devastation is quite severe it looks like the populace for the most part weathered the storm thankfully.

Houston and area is without power and Nick mentioned that it will be a few days before it will be restored. Everyone is ok and things are calming down. Not sure where it puts things for the HSB to be fully restored since the server move but things should be back to normal shortly.

** UPDATE **Pictures here - no major damage except for the pepper plants (they may still pull through) - but we don’t have power and may not have any for the next week. Trees are down throughout the neighborhood and a few homes have taken direct hits, but the neighbors pitched in an cleaned up the street once the rains died down so spirits are up and everyone is helping out. Now it’s time to hang out in the dark.

On Wednesday, August 27th, at Salem Harbor Power Station in Salem, Ma, 12 contestants assembled to face off in the 1st Annual Hot Wing Challenge. How did this happen?
It all started with a phone call from the foreman to Fred S. ( a long time member of The Hot Sauce Blog and Hot Sauce Collector) about a week before the BBQ. He was putting together a BBQ for the plant and asked if Fred would do a Hot Wing Contest at his BBQ. There was not very much time before the BBQ was going to take place so Fred called on a few people to help out. A committee was quickly put together by Charlie M. and the pieces quickly began to fall into place. For the contest it was decided to use the Defcon Contest Rules, why reinvent the wheel? Thank you to the Creator! Posters went out. T shirts were ordered. A sign-up sheet was posted and 12 contestants stepped forward. Three judges were needed, no problem. Something was still missing. We needed an independant consultant to make the sauce HOT so a phone call was made to Ed, ChiliHeadEd that is, owner of the RedRum Hot Sauce Company. Was he available to help ? The answer was YES.

On Wednesday the 27th of August preparations began early in the morning for the big day, the tables were set up, wings were pre cooked by Fred using his special recipe on the grill and the contest sauce was prepared. The Salem Power Plant has a Proprietary BBQ Sauce - FITZ’nfred’s Powerhouse (Habanero) BBQ Sauce. Fitz and Fred Both Have Big Gardens and Grow a lot of Habaneros for their sauce. It was taken up to Contest level with the addition of Mad Dog 357 5 million scoville extract, CaJohn’s Black Mamba and RedRum Special Reserve with 16 Million Crystals! Let’s just say it was Hot, Damn Hot, F…in Hot, Blow your face off Hot!….yet it still tasted good!

The contest was scheduled for High Noon…I think I just heard some Clint Eastwoodesque whistling….
The 12 Contestants line up behind the tables and 10 wings drenched in explosively hot sauce are placed in front of each contestant, “Evacuation Receptacles” as The Defcon Creator would so succinctly refer to them are judiciously placed around the perimeter. The judges speak to the contestants, preparing them for the pain to follow, warning any with medical issues to beware, reviewing the rules etc. over 75 fellow Salem Harbor Plant workers gather around to witness the carnage and Charlie M, the timekeeper says GO!

And and we are off. The sauce is going everywhere. Faces covered. Leanne P. drops out and 11 press on. The company doctor has entered as a contestant and he has tears in his eyes and his nose is running uncontrollably! Darcy has it in her hair! Everyone is wearing sauce all over their faces, what a sight! Amazingly, at 2 minutes, 15 seconds, we have the first contestant finish, Rick G has finished all 10 pieces. At a little over 3 minutes, Dan S. is done, and right behind him, Peter T. Everyone is still at the table, suffering along as the spectators cheer. Time is almost up, 30 seconds to go, Fred has one last wing and finishes just as time was up and now 5 minutes with hands on the table starts. 11 finished and all got white t shirts that say “I survived the Salem Harbor Hot Wing Challenge” except for the winner, Rick G. He got the coveted Red t shirt that says “I WON the Salem Harbor Hot Wing Challenge”. Rick is now referred to as the Salem Harbor “Junk Yard Dog”. He was an animal and impressive to watch. Awards were given out for 1st,2nd,3rd place and Leanne P. got the “Tabasco Award” as first to drop out.

A good time was had by all and this is sure to be an annual tradition at The Salem Harbor Plant!

Congratulations Rick “Junk Yard Dog” G.!

Still working on getting everything loaded - and boarding up the windows here. If I have power tomorrow, we’ll be up full steam very soon.