Pepper Sauce and Stood Up II
4/6/1

Well, I'm writing my stuffo from a different place than usual. Aisai and her mom are preparing for a garage sale tomorrow and I've shown up earlier than needed to pick Aisai up. So, I'm typing this up, killing time, on Aisai's Mom's computer.

And I tell you what, I hate her keyboard. You know those little feet that can fold down on the bottom of the keyboard so that it's angled more toward you? There is only one of them. And when I go to hit the backspace, I hit the key. It's all moderately irritating.

But the most irritating thing right now, for me, is my hands.

When people say you should wear gloves when making hot sauce, they mean it. My most burning place is under the thumbnail of my right hand. I used that to scoop out the seeds from the jalepe�os.

Some of my peppers were fire hot, while others were mild. That's what happens when you get your peppers at Wal-Mart. I thought I made way too much, but it ended up that it filled the three pepper sauce bottles which Aisai gave me, an 8 ounce glass diet coke bottle, and the bottom 1/3 of a Folgers Instant Coffee jar.

Pouring out that instant coffee was a mercy killing.

So, you may ask, what did you put in your hot sauce? Well, I did try to pay attention, but like anything that is done by a newbie, I didn't write it down and I also got carried away with what I was doing.

I started with two onions which Aisai and I found out were quite hot. It seems that when we buy the three pound bag of onions, they are hot as foo-yan. I used our mini food processor and pureed them.

I blanched two pounds of jalepe�os, a celery stalk, and a green bell pepper in about a cup of distilled white vinegar. It took about 6 batches to get it all done. As each batch came off, it would go into the processor and get pureed. After that, it would get dumped into a saucepan.

Besides the produce, I also added about two tablespoons of ground black pepper, about a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of garlic salt, two teaspoons of paprika in an attempt to make it a different color, and about a half a teaspoon of Folgers Instant Coffee. Hey, I made the Folgers sacrifice its jar; I owed it that much.

I simmered it for about 30 minutes after I got it all assembled and messed around with the hand blender and just made a mess. That stuff just really didn't want to thin, so I added all the vinegar that I blanched the peppers in.

The funnel I had was the same size as the pepper sauce bottle tops. In other words, the funnel wouldn't fit in. I had to hold it in place. Also, the sauce was too thick to go in without me pushing it through the funnel with the back of my wooden spoon.

That's probably another reason my hands were burning. I didn't rinse it or anything.

The funnel went into the diet coke bottle easily and filling the Folgers jar was done with the spoon.

The sauce needs to age a while, about a week. Then I'll give some to Pat at work and, heck, someone else. I like it, but I do not need three bottles of the stuff. Too bad Matt is traveling the world this year. He'd appreciate some.

The flavor is like the base of a Caribbean hot sauce, but with different spices. It has a rich, nutty flavor. No, it doesn't have a rich, nutty flavor. I just wanted to say that.

Oh, and about getting stood up. I did. The termite man didn't show at four and didn't call. The body shop didn't call telling me my car was ready and the car rental place didn't call saying the PT Cruiser was in.

Why isn't there a silly rhyme like "I'm a poet and don't know it" about being a prophet? I'm all about being overly cliched. It makes me seem more mainstream.

"Your feet show it, they're Longfellows."