Whew - it’s about done! As some of you have heard, I’ve been working on a new HSB - it’s been talked about elsewhere without much information - but the few folks I invited in to test things have been a tremendous help with working out the bugs. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty more to do, because there certainly is.

A few things that still need to be done:
- Old HSB intergration - the older blog posts found here will eventually be moved over to the new platform, but in the meantime they will remain here.
- Old forum integration - same as above, but I’ve got to get the links to the old forum fixed first.
- The new network has a slew of new features, so please register and poke around - and let me know if you have any questions. One of my favorite features will be a geographic listing and mapping function of all the hot sauce stores - but that’s still being worked on. I had hoped to have it done before this announcement, but Halloween prep got in the way.

A few formalities to discuss:
- HSB Network Stuff:
Think of the HSB Network as a laid back art gallery; open to all artists whose passion is creating (& eating) hot sauce and related items like wing sauce, bbq sauce, pepper items, collectibles etc. The gallery is a meeting place as well. It allows us to admire the work of our peers, offer praise, advice and share knowledge in the form of how-to info, recipes & reviews. I’m assuming the gallery also has a dingy bar and a juke full of good tunes in the back, but I digress…

Some other things worth mentioning:
Image based comments - Please don’t. Frankly I think we’re all grown ups here and would much rather see someone take the time to write a sentence rather than spam our profile page with a sparkly picture of strawberry goth-cake.

Respect for other members - This is a no drama zone. I don’t care if someone just posted that your Mom left her fishnet stockings, whip cream and cattle prod over their house. If you reply publicly, you’re just as guilty. The mods will deal with the drama starter, do not reply, and don’t reply on behalf of someone. Feel free to shoot me a message, and we’ll deal with it. A-holes are like Gremlins, only it doesn’t matter what time you feed them. The second you reply it cascades into a big mess.

And I can promise you if I ever have an issue with a member it will never be handled publicly. It’s a simple matter of respect, and I hope everyone will act in the same manner. If it’s contentious in any way, take it off-line and off the network. There are other places on the web for that behavior – and this isn’t one of them.

Manufacturers – Feel free to register! You are welcome to add any press releases or announcements to the blogs section – but please no more then 2 per week. We’ve always welcomed Manufacturers interaction and we hope this new system will allow everyone to get their fair share of news coverage. And also feel free to post anything else chilehead worthy.

Collectors – In one form or another, we’re all collectors. We each have our affinities (I personally prefer 5oz. woozies) – so please respect each others collections, opinions and views. Use the classifieds section to sell or trade anything chilehead related. If you are running an eBay auction – you may also want to blog it to get more views.

That about covers it, thanks for reading all this. Bookmark http://community.hotsauceblog.com and check it out!

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.

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.

Mild habanero pepper created
WESLACO — Texas pepper breeders have done it again — they’ve created a mild version of a pepper infamous for its heat. First came the mild jalapeño; now comes a mild version of the habanero, considered by many to be the hottest pepper in the world.

The TAM Mild Habanero, the result of a five-year breeding program in South Texas, is now available to growers and should eventually find its way to kitchens, salad bars and salsas everywhere.

Like the TAM Mild Jalapeño, the new mild habanero is expected to entice the palates of consumers who may have shunned its culinary attributes for fear of its mouth-scorching, tear-jerking heat. This new version is much more user-friendly, according to its creator.

“It’s a beautiful pepper with all the aroma and flavor of the traditional habanero but with just a fraction of the pungency,” said Kevin Crosby, a pepper breeder at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at Weslaco. This is the same facility that released the world’s first mild jalapeño pepper in 1981.

Crosby began crossing peppers in 1999, hoping to develop a new product for growers in South Texas. Biting into pepper after pepper, Crosby and his technicians discarded thousands of breeding lines for being too hot or too bland, or for not exhibiting plant characteristics important to growers, including early maturity, high yields, properly shaped and sized pods, and resistance to insects and diseases.

But eventually, progeny from a cross between a hot Yucatan habanero and a heatless habanero from Bolivia began to show promise. Several generations and a few backcrosses later, the TAM Mild Habanero emerged.

Laboratory tests verified extremely low pungency.

“It’s got only 150 parts per million capsaicin, compared to the 12,700 parts per million in the original Yucatan habanero,” Crosby said, “It’s comparable to the very low heat you’d find in Anaheim peppers or Greek salad peppers.”

Capsaicin is the compound in peppers that gives them their heat.

Depending on growing conditions, habaneros can have up to 35,000 parts per million capsaicin, some of the highest levels found in peppers that are consumed and far too hot for most connoisseurs to enjoy, Crosby said.

With a slightly more yellow skin than its hotter, darker orange cousins, the mild Habanero should do well among growers and consumers, Crosby said.

“Demand for habaneros, for use in salsas and as a fresh market product, has been increasing the past five to 10 years, more so than the demand for other hot peppers,” he said. “And they’ve maintained their high value. Fresh market jalapeños sell for 50 cents a pound; habaneros sell for between $3 and $4 a pound.”

The TAM Mild Habanero was approved for release to the public by Texas A&M’s Plant Release Committee and a patent is pending from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Variety Protection division.

How soon the new pepper will be available to consumers depends on how quickly commercial seed companies buy rights to the new pepper and increase seed for sale to growers.

“We also have several salsa companies who are interested in growing their own mild habaneros,” he said. “And we have seed companies who would like to see more growing data in regions other than Texas before they commit. But I suspect that by next spring consumers may finally get a chance to taste this new mild habanero.”

Answer: For home-drying fruits and vegetables, the most reliable way is to dry them in a food dehydrator or in the oven if you don’t have a dedicated food dryer. Peppers can be dried in the sun as well. I have seen acres of red peppers being dried out in the sun in arid Arizona. But despite our name of the Sunshine State, sunshine bright enough to dry things can be pretty fickle here. Then there are those sudden squalls to contend with.

Here is how I would go about it: Wash, drain and dry the peppers well. If you want to dry these beautiful, cherry-like peppers whole, cut a slit in each to let moisture out; or you can halve and seed. (Seeding will reduce heat, since some cherry peppers can have a fair bite.) If you have a large amount, put the prepared peppers on a towel-lined baking sheet or tray in a single layer and dry until leathery in a 200-degree oven, about 8 hours. Keep the oven door slightly ajar for air circulation.

If it is a small amount, just place the tray on top of the refrigerator. Warm air rising from the back of the fridge will help dry the fruits (yes, peppers are fruits!) quicker. For an electric food dehydrator, follow the manufacturer’s instructions. These reasonably priced gadgets are a boon if you like to dry fruits and veggies.

Drying may be fine, but the traditional method of preserving cherry peppers is to pickle them. Although nothing will really save the beautiful red color and glossy skin of the fresh cherry peppers, pickling may be kinder to their looks.

Florida man subjected stepson to fiery punishment
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:39 a.m. ET Oct. 13, 2004
SARASOTA, Fla - Prosecutors have decided to drop felony child-neglect charges against a Florida man who forced his 13-year-old stepson to drink hot sauce as punishment for leaving a gate open.

When Michael Massanelli was arrested in June, he told detectives he was upset because his 2-year-old daughter could have wandered out of the gate left open by his stepson.
According to an attorney for Massanelli, prosecutors have acknowledged that making the teen-ager drink hot sauce was no different than washing a child’s mouth out with soap.
In the lawyer’s words, “if giving hot sauce were criminal, then a lot of our grandmothers would have gone to jail.”
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

Charles Paul Freund

Here’s W ketchup, perfect for pouring over freedom fries. ‘You don’t support Democrats,’ says the tag line, ‘why should your ketchup?’ The brand was born, recalls the manufacturers chairman, when a group of friends found that reaching for Heinz condiments was spoiling their barbecues. The company insists that W stands for Washington.
Political foods used to be a novelty in the U.S. There was a 1964 campaign soft drink named Goldwater, for example, and its Democratic answer, Johnson Juice. The 1970s saw the short-lived Billy Beer, named for Jimmy Carters hapless brother (who actually drank Pabst). In recent years, though, political branding has become a niche of sorts. The Iraq invasion saw a wave of anti-Saddam hot sauce brands. Ben & Jerry?s, the ice cream outfit, is one of numerous companies to associate their products with liberal causes. In response, some conservatives are now producing Star Spangled Ice Cream, available in such flavors as Nutty Environmentalist and I Hate the French Vanilla.
In fact, W ketchup itself has inspired an alternative. A product called Bush Country Ketchup accuses the W brand of centrist politics, and of merely ‘masquerad[ing] as a conservative condiment.’ Bush Country markets itself with the tagline, ‘Making sure Kerry won?t ketchup to W.