Among the Christmas presents I got was a cold. Normally rhinoviruses tend to get in my way, but it allowed me the opportunity to try two hot sauces and blend one of my own.

The first sauce I tried after Christmas was Texas Champagne by D.L. Jardine’s. It’s a cayenne pepper sauce that’s runny like Tabasco but not as spicy. I used a lot of it on some rice and beans; one of the four-pack I got is already gone.

A couple of days ago we went to the nearest b.d.’s Mongolian Barbeque restaurant. The concept is quite unique: a create-your-own-stirfry that you take to a huge cooking table for the chefs to fry up. I created a stir-fry with the following:

  • one-third bowl of New York Strip
  • one-third bowl of crawfish
  • one third bowl of water chestnuts and bean sprouts for crunch
  • Sauce: one-third c. mongolian marinara, one-third kung pao, one-third spicy buffalo
  • Spice: 1½ tsp. cayenne, 1½ tsp. curry powder

The heat level was PERFECT (and my “perfect” seems to be hotter than most others’): no hiccups (from being too hot), slightly puffy lips and slight redness in the face, and most importantly my locked up nose and sinuses cleared. The unfortunate thing was that the cayenne flavor completely overpowered everything else; next time I may back that down and put in some more curry, and back down the marinara and put in more kung pao. :)

Finally yesterday I tried some of that 100% Pain I received for Father’s Day. Pain is habanero based and almost two-phase, a marinara-like pepper paste suspended in juice. The stuff is so hot I can’t eat it alone or as a dip. It gave me the hiccups immediately. It does, though, mix easily with barbeque sauce and livens up New Year’s meatballs quite nicely.