Great Globs Of Fire

Addressing the issue of hot sauce today, I'd like to point out that I am not in fact a food snob. Booze snob yes, food snob no.

Hot sauce is something I've recently grown fond of thanks to a Seattle friend, and I put it on nearly everything. Pasta, pizza, and even in my can of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. It zings up everything and clears out the sinuses. I usually use Tapatio, and carry a bottle in my backpack at all times should I ever counter something bland on my way to work (this idea stolen from Don Vito from Bam Margera's show).

The thing I don't understand is when makers of hot sauce make the stuff unbearably hot. Somehow, they find a way to condense so much of the hot stuff (called capsicum) which happens to also be the active ingredient in pepperspray, and put it into a bottle. I'm all for a good burn, even getting put up in the Seattle's Wing Dome "Wall of Flame" for eating a #7 out of 7 level spicy wing, but I'm not all about eating sauce where one drop will literally send me into convulsions all the while I attempt to flood my mouth with 3 gallons of milk. And speaking from experience, I've done this. My first and only encounter with "too much sauce" was cooking one night while in a semi-drunken stupor. I decided to make ramen (per usual) and was out of Tapatio. I used a bottle of hot sauce the Seattle friend gave me (called "Dave's Insanity Sauce") and put two drops in my ramen. Shortly after eating it, I began to sweat profusely and my tongue started to register an extreme tingle. It wasn't long before I was pulling the Dumb and Dumber move of attepting to hose off my tongue under a faucet.

Until this had happened, the only inanimate objects I had ever cussed at were things I stubbed my toe on, and things I bumped my head on. This bottle got the very pointless but very satisfying end of my verbal 2 x 4.

Freakin' hot sauce!