Summer’s coming to the Berkshires and I have heat on my mind.
Have you noticed how everything is spicy now? Dishes laced with jalapenos, exotic chilies, or peppers? Habanero is as likely to be put on French Toast as syrup.
I remember when “60 Minutes” aired their exclusive interview with the family that owns Tabasco. So while Tabasco may have started it all in the U.S., for thousands of years peppers have been a part of the diet of various cultures. We Americans were a little slow to come to the pepper table. But if you go to the supermarket and hit the pepper sauce aisle these days, you’ll find hundreds of kinds of hot sauce. In fact, visit Hot Sauce Life List and the list will boggle your taste buds.
Even Amazon is in on the game, listing the hottest of the hot with names like “Dave’s Ultimate Insanity Hot Sauce Hottest Sauce in the Universe,” “Satan’s Blood Hot Sauce,” “Blair’s Ultra Death Sauce,” “Da’Bomb The Final Answer Hot Sauce,” Zombie Cajun “The Antidote Hot Sauce,” and my favorite, “One F—in’ Drop at a Time Hot Sauce.” There are hot sauce tasting clubs, ingesting contests, cook-offs, hot sauce crying contests, and hot sauce diet clubs. There’s a new TV show currently being produced (I know for a fact, as my kid is one of the producers) called “Tongue Thai’d” where contestants answer questions and depending upon the answer, they eat hotter and spicier food until … what? Their head spins off their neck? Is that the winner or the loser?
So a little hot sauce 411: Spicy foods can raise your body temperature, which, if you are living in a warmer climate, is a good thing because it makes you sweat and therefore feel cooler than the air surrounding you. This would not have worked this winter in the Berkshires. Spicy foods also stimulate your circulation. For those of you who tightened up on oil this winter, I guess that could have worked. Overly spiced foods can literally burn and blister your mouth, as in don’t pre-heat if you have a hot date that night.
But for the most part, spices stimulate you, and not just your appetite but the rest of you as well … all the rest of you! Spicy food can be a “wake-up” call to the senses. But according to OC Weekly (and I admit that I have no idea what that is), some of what is tickling your tongue is not just the sauce. There are four sauces that exceed the FDA’s limit of culinary lead. Now, I never even knew we were permitted to have lead in our food; we can’t even have it in our paint, so why are we eating it. I’m not listing those sauces, just in case someone is wrong. I don’t want to end up with a mouthful of the stuff unexpectedly.
So, is the sauce less spicy if lead-free? Is it the answer to the oil and gasoline crisis? Some years ago, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported on a guy who lost 70 pounds by ingesting hot sauce whenever he had a craving for something unhealthy and fattening. A slug of Satan’s Hot Blood sounds like it can certainly dull your appetite, as well as peel the paint off your wall. He goes on to cite the many historical uses of hot peppers, such as aiding digestion and fighting infection.
Too much of a good thing can be bad for you though, leading to blistering of the skin or diarrhea. The “Everything Hot Sauce Book” claims that these amazing peppers can fight cancer, lower high blood pressure and even eliminate wrinkles — that’s what I’m looking for. Just put a little hot sauce on those crows’ feet and watch them … and your eyesight … disappear.
Hot sauce looks like it’s here to stay. Bland food be gone! The meat-and-potato crowd better get with the program and learn to spice up their life. The Arizona Farm Bureau reports that the first commercially made hot sauce made its debut in 1807. (Why the Arizona Farm Bureau? I have no idea). Tabasco was introduced in 1868 and is the oldest surviving brand to date, raking in more than $200 million a year. According to Forbes, the global industry is projected to make $2.89 billion this year. That’s hot stuff! And there’s money in them there chilies. Peppercorns used to be used as currency to pay fines, taxes, rescue hostages from ancient wars.
So how many peppercorns would it take to pay your kid’s college tuition next year?
