Note to Duane and Patty C

[Jenise]

Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be living at or near ground zero for Pepper Plant Hot Sauce?

I LOVE THAT STUFF. And everytime I'm in your area, I drag three or four bottles home with me. By the way--no garlic or chipotle here, just give me the original.

We sell the stuff in our store.

[Jenise]

So you don't even have to shop around for it. Lucky you--I could drink it straight from the bottle.

[Robin Garr]

So you don't even have to shop around for it. Lucky you--I could drink it straight from the bottle.

For those of us east of the Rockies and thus deprived, tell us what's so exceptional about this wonderful sounding hot sauce!

[Jenise]

Wanna find out for yourself? I'll mail you one. (Can't mail wine out of this friggin' state any more, but I can send hot sauce!)

It's chunky, it's tangy and salty, it's a very complex heat, and it's great on scrambled eggs or chicken wings. It was originally made in Atascadero and was strictly a locally-available product. I discovered it back in my Bakersfield days at some greasy spoon, where it was on the table with the Tabasco and the ketcup. Talked them into selling me a bottle. Secured more at great expense and moved to Alaska with a stash which of course, ran out too soon (1 bottle = about 3 batches of chicken wings). Then during our Compuserve years, someone--probably you!--made everybody list all the hot sauces they had on hand. You might remember an erudite music teacher and forum regular named Alan who lived in the Paso area--well, he listed Pepper Plant and I went nuts. He sent me half a case. That got me by for a few more years, then came a long dry spell that ended with a trip to Paso about a year and a half ago with our whole L.A. wine group. I think I turned the whole lot of them into Pepper Plant addicts. Though I appreciate many others, I could live on Tapatio and Pepper Plant alone.

Say, might be time for another hot sauce poll.

Will have to give Pepper Plant another try. I have the garlic Pepper Plant in my refer now....will look on in the workshop in the hot sauce cupboard and see if I have any of the original.

My favorite one is the BBQ sauce. We used to have our almond butter made in the same place that the Pepper Plant sauces were made in. It was quite an interesting combination. I also took a glance at our inventory and we do have some in stock. Jenise have you tried the Habanero version?

[Jenise]

Duane, I don't think I knew that there was a habanero version. I love habanero peppers--a girlfriend's uncle in Trinidad used to make his own habanero sauce with those peppers, green mangoes, mustard, and god knows what else. Every time she visited she would come home with a half gallon of it and would siphon off a bottle for me which I guarded jealously (that is, reserved for my own exclusive use, never served to company, not knowing when I'd get more). We called it Uncle Cecil's and it was just the best stuff. Had an incredible fruity heat that would start out on a high note and fade quickly--the heat that is, the other flavors made this really long finish--you could have this sauce at night and wake up in the morning still tasting it--and we finally realized we had something here with commercial potential. Plans were afoot for us to go to Trinidad and learn to make it ourselves direct from the master when he up and died, taking his recipe with him. I coulda been a contendah....

Anyway, never have found the equal since, and I haven't had the Pepper Plant Habanero. You reccomend it?

You know I thought I liked hot stuff until a ate some habanero pecan brittle that we used to sell in out store. That stuff burned so bad that I almost will not try anything with habanero in it any more. That means that I have never tried the Pepper Plant Habanero sauce. Pepper Plant sells their products online now, did you know?

Best hot stuff I ever had was in Shanghai China. I took one bite of the stuff and it was so hot it took my breath away and couldn't even talk. I wanted to warn the other people at the table about it before they got burned. Then about 30 secs latter the burn subsided and you could eat the rest of the dish no problem. We had it several times when we were there. I never did find out what the stuff was and have never had it again in any Chinese food.

[Jenise]

You know I thought I liked hot stuff until a ate some habanero pecan brittle that we used to sell in out store. That stuff burned so bad that I almost will not try anything with habanero in it any more. That means that I have never tried the Pepper Plant Habanero sauce. Pepper Plant sells their products online now, did you know?

Best hot stuff I ever had was in Shanghai China. I took one bite of the stuff and it was so hot it took my breath away and couldn't even talk. I wanted to warn the other people at the table about it before they got burned. Then about 30 secs latter the burn subsided and you could eat the rest of the dish no problem. We had it several times when we were there. I never did find out what the stuff was and have never had it again in any Chinese food.

In Shanghai! I didn't run into any hot food in Shanghai at all. But the closer we got to Chongqing, the hotter the food got. In fact, the crew on our boat (we went by boat from Nanjing to Chongqing, a nine day trip) were all Chongqing based and a friend and I often got our waitstaff to get us some of the crew food when it sounded more interesting than what was on our menu. Man, that stuff was HOT! What westerners think of as Szechuan-hot doesn't even come close, does it?