There are products that I run across that make me ask “How the heck did I not know about this sooner?” This is one of those. We remember tasting stuff from Sparky & Spike’s last year at the 2007 Jungle Jim’s Weekend of Fire event, but were so overwhelmed with other stuff that we never got back to getting any of it for ourselves. Well, we rectified that oversight by picking up this jar of Hot and Spicy Tangy Pepper Relish by Sparky & Spike’s at this past Cinco D’Ohio Festival here in Columbus.

Ingredients: water, prepared mustard (distilled vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, turmeric, paprika, spice, natural flavor, garlic powder), distilled vinegar, sugar, brown sugar, red and green bell peppers, red and green jalapeno peppers

For those of you who expect your relish to have pickles in it…well, this one is blissfully free of that. In fact, a little vinegar is the only real comparison you can make to those pickled cucumbers, as this is a true pepper relish. Not only that, but it is completely all-natural and allergen-free. A great addition to your pantry regardless of your food preferences if for that reason alone.

Our relish is all-natural, fat-free, looks great, and is very versatile in the kitchen or on the grill…and oh yeah, it tastes fantastic too! Our relish comes in two flavors, Spicy-with a decent amount of kick, and Hot and Spicy-Which promises to bite you but not leave any marks. Our customers describe the experience as “addictive!”, “It’s delicious on almost anything” and “This stuff should be outlawed, cause I can’t stop eating it!”

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We received the following message from our buddy Al “Buddah” Goldenberg, who has taken on the noblest of plights…to help children afflicted with a potentially debilitating disease. Type 1 Diabetes, although named juvenile diabetes because it often manifests itself during childhood, also afflicts this writer (and happened when I was 32)…so I encourage you with my heart and soul to consider supporting this cause the best that you can. Here’s a message from Buddah:

Greetings!

I’m writing to you to ask for your support in a very special cause.
This year, I’ll be taking part in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Walk to Cure Diabetes along with a half-million other walkers across the country. Our goal: To raise $100 million to help fund research for a cure for type 1 diabetes and its complications. My friend Kirsten has 2 kids, Dustin and Brandon who were born with this deadly disease. She has a team I am walking on this Sunday, and I want to help her reach and surpass her goal. If anyone can help I would be so grateful for your donation even if it is a $1, it is better than nothing because if everyone gives a $1 then the cure will be closer than we could ever hope for.

Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, is a devastating, often deadly disease that affects millions of people–a large and growing percentage of them children.

Many people think type 1 diabetes can be controlled by insulin. While insulin does keep people with type 1 diabetes alive, it is NOT a cure. Aside from the daily challenges of living with type 1 diabetes, there are many severe, often fatal, complications caused by the disease.

That’s the bad news… and yes, it’s pretty bad.

The good news, though, is that a cure for type 1 diabetes is within reach. In fact, JDRF funding and leadership is associated with most major scientific breakthroughs in type 1 diabetes research to date. And JDRF funds a major portion of all type 1 diabetes research worldwide, more than any other charity.

I’m writing to ask for your support because now more than ever, EACH of us can be a part of bringing about a cure. Each of us can make a real difference.

Won’t you please give to JDRF as generously as you’re able?
Together, we can make the cure a reality.

Thank you,
Al Goldenberg

Please visit my Walk Web page if you would like to donate online or see how close I am to reaching my personal goal:

http://walk.jdrf.org/walker.cfm?id=87033294

The Hot Zone Online salutes the lifelong chileheads who have the gumption to go into business for themselves with their passion, as evidenced from this article from the Henderson Gleaner. Kudos to Bill Barker and his Devil Breath Chile Company:

Quiet town turns red hot, spicy sauces heating up region

By Garret Mathews (Contact)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008

BROUGHTON, Ill. — There isn’t much going on in Broughton, a community of about 200 souls in Hamilton County. The sporting goods store closed a while back, and the nearest grocery store is six miles away in Dale.

But commerce lives in the form of Bill Barker’s hot peppers.

Barker, 48, who calls himself a “lifelong chilehead,” oversees the growing of several different varieties of peppers used in the preparation of such products as Werewolf Steak Sauce and Devil’s Breath Hot Sauce.

He sells the spicy sauces and condiments online at www.chilestuff.com, and regionally at stores in McCleansboro, Eldorado and Carbondale.

“Last year, I planted 3,000 peppers, and I’m almost sold out,” he said. “We started out word of mouth, and then we went to several fairs and festivals across this part of the state.”

He got hooked on hot peppers when he was 5 years old.

“My father put down a gallon jar of jalapeno peppers and challenged me to an eating contest,” he said. “It wasn’t that time, but it wasn’t too long until he couldn’t keep up with me.”

Click here to read the rest of the source article

We are constantly thrilled to find that there are people who can make hot sauce at home that is every bit as good as the ones you buy from the professional sauce makers. However, it often takes numerous rounds of experimentation to get your sauce just right. Thank goodness for events like the amateur hot sauce competition from this past Cinco D’Ohio Festival at the North Market here in Columbus, OH. Gathered were a collection of amateur hot sauce creators dueling for the affection of the judges (myself included), and these sauces by Donavan Stanley were the runaway winners amongst the competition. Donavan was thoughtful enough to have some extras on hand (in some spiffy frosted bottles) to share with us to try without the pressure of making a spot decision on their merit.

Precious Booty Ingredients: Tomato puree, Rum, malt vinegar, habanero peppers, shallots, onions, honey, brown sugar, rice vinegar, jolokia pepper, spices.

Purple Nurple Ingredients: Black Currant Preserves (Black Currants, Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Citric Acid, Fruit Pectin), Vinegar, habanero peppers, jolokia peppers.
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I think this article from Epi-Log on Epicurious.com pretty much speaks for itself. While not known for being a fan of Tabasco, or their products, this might almost be worth forking out a few bucks:

Chile Head Alert: Limited-Edition Tabasco Sauce
by Megan O. Steintrager
on 05/22/08 at 06:40 PM

All you hot sauce collectors out there might want to consider heading over to Tabasco.com for a bottle of limited-edition Avery Island Reserve Tabasco, named after the island in south Louisiana where the sauce was created by Edmund McIlhenny and is still made. To celebrate its 140th anniversary, the family-owned McIlhenny Company released 2,500 5-ounce bottles of the fiery stuff.

What makes it so special? “Avery Island Reserve is aged and processed the same as original Tabasco Sauce,” says Paul McIlhenny, president and CEO of McIlhenny Company. “The difference is that it’s made from just the finest Avery Island peppers that are hand-selected by McIlhenny family members. Because these peppers are at their peak ripeness - fiery in color and heat - the Reserve is noticeably brighter in color and heat.”

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Well, our shipment of pepper plants finally arrived today from Cross Country Nurseries. For several years now, we’ve made the decision to grow our peppers in containers. Part of that stems from not having a decent garden space to grow them in actual soil in the ground. For one thing, the soil here in the midwestern U.S. is terrible for peppers. It has a high clay content, which makes planting problematic unless you till the soil and add some more sand and/or peat to soften it up. That fact, plus not having any part of our yard that has dedicated space for plants like this make containers the path of least resistance.

We’ve also made the mistake in years past of getting pepper plants of varieties that we really couldn’t use or didn’t grow all that well. So, this year we decided to go back to basics and get a lot of “staple” chile peppers and see what we could do with the peppers that we know well, both from growing and cooking/preparation perspectives. Here’s what we have for this year:
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Bret Vitek of Jungle Jim’s has provided an update of the list of vendors for the upcoming Weekend of Fire show this coming August. To see this list, you can click HERE.

Also, the current economy has had at least one hot & spicy casualty…the ZestFest Miami show originally scheduled for this coming June has been cancelled. However, plans for the original Texas-based ZestFest for September are still set to go.

It’s been a few months since I’ve written about the chemistry of capsaicin, but it’s this sort of science geek stuff about hot and spicy that will probably end up in a research paper I intend to do in the next few months. Check this article out from the most recent online edition of Physorg.com:

Some like it hot! Structure of receptor for hot chili pepper and pain revealed

You can now not only feel the spicy kick of a jalapeno pepper, you can also see it in full 3D, thanks to researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Using sophisticated equipment, the research team led by Dr Theodore G. Wensel, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at BCM, generated the first three dimensional view of the protein that allows you to sense the heat of a hot pepper. The report appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This protein, known as TRPV1, not only senses spicy foods, but also makes it possible to feel real heat and the pain and inflammation related to other medical conditions,” said Wensel, senior author on the study. “This method of viewing the protein now gives us the chance to clearly see the functional relationship between outside stimuli and the nerve cell.”

The outside stimulus used in this study was the heat of a chili pepper. It has been known for years that the burning sensation results from the action of a chemical known as capsaicin on TRPV1 found on the nerve cell membrane. TRPV1 is an ion channel, a tiny pore on the cell membrane that allows chemicals such as calcium to flux in and out.

“Any time you feel a burn or pain sensation, it is mediated by a TRPV1 channel. Different levels of heat are mediated by different TRP channels,” said Dr. Vera Moiseenkova-Bell, a postdoctoral associate in Wensel’s laboratory at BCM and first author of the study. “They are all related but each is regulated in a different manner.”

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Ah yes, Fire Foods. I got to see this company start up way back when via The Hot Pepper forums. I’ve watched it grow and I must say they are really starting to grow fast. I’m finally getting a taste of what this fine company has to offer, thanks Woody!

Fire Foods Reserve Ingredients: Fruit juice, carrot, vinegar, Black Treacle Chilli (11.9%), mustard (water, mustard seed, spirit vinegar, salt), water, Bih Jolokia Chilli powder.

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CaJohns‘ new chili parlour received quite a great write-up in the most recent edition of the Columbus Alive paper, which we happily bring to your attention. We’ve nibble on some of the selection, and they are all that and a bag of (tortilla) chips:

Chili-out

By G.A. Benton

When a hot sauce at the terrific North Market shop called CaJohn’s says on its label it contains the world’s hottest pepper, believe it. Do not — like a certain goofily grinning, thick-headed idiot I know (OK, me) — allow hubris to define your next action.

Because even the teensiest possible pinpoint of that blazing, wicked stuff barely spotting the end of a pretzel stick will, when applied to a stupidly outstretched tongue, induce convulsions of pure agony. Will initiate a penetrating self-hatred. Will force a dancing outburst of the Watusi. Will cause a usually gentle adult to knock over grandmothers and small children in an ugly and wobbly sprint to buy ice cream.

So take my advice and do not try anything at CaJohn’s that says it’s made with the hottest pepper in the world. But do try about everything else. Because this family-run, nationally lauded operation (winner of more than 100 country-wide first-place awards) has lots of other great hot sauces, salsas and chili kits that are packed with flavor but nowhere near as incendiary as that burnin’-like-Chernobyl stuff I unwisely sampled.

Click here to read the rest of the source article from the Columbus Alive paper

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