Hot Sauce #1: Cholula Hot Sauce

This blog started as most blogs probably start. Namely, boredom and the desperate need for distraction. And the desire for people to send you free stuff like, for example, samples of delicious, scrumptious hot sauce. It's a Sunday morning, the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, it turns out, and things are gloomy. It's a gray day, and we've got nothing to do but count contractions until my wife finally goes into labor on the one day in September we were hoping to avoid. There's nothing in the Sunday morning paper but sentimental 9/11 tributes. Nothing on NPR but somber 9/11 programming. Nothing of interest on my daily internet loop other than the fact that, with three weeks left to go in the season, my Fantasy League Baseball team is completely pooping the bed. There's nowhere to go but the 9/11 tribute at Clipper Magazine Stadium, home of the mighty Lancaster Barnstormers. Parenthetical note: We did end up going to the tribute, and found it remarkably moving. The bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace" had us tearing up before we even got through the gates.

In summary, nothing to see, nothing to do, and the contractions are still a good 20 minutes apart. So let's start a hot sauce blog.

Hot Sauce #1: Cholula Hot Sauce from Chapala, Guadalajara, Mexico. I chose this hot sauce as my first subject based on my astute scientific observation that it had a cute little wooden cap on the top. Editorial note: This blog will be purely subjective, with Frank's RedHot serving as the standard against which all other hot sauces will be measured. Mmmm, Frank's.

Taste: Cholula's taste is very mild and unobtrusive - in fact, it's hardly there at all. I was barely able to taste it on eggs, toast or potatoes, and if the flavor of potatoes is overwhelming your hot sauce, something is wrong. I could detect some smokiness, but that was about the extent of it. Option B was to eat it in a pool on top of a Wheat Thin. Success - taste detected. What I found was a zesty, fresh, garden flavor that was more vegetable-y than I would normally expect from a hot sauce. It tasted suspiciously healthy, like something my wife buys when she gets tired of listening to me complain about my belly flab-alanche. The good news: very unusual, very tasty. The bad news: I had to drink a gallon to find it.

Burn: This hot sauce had what could generously be described as a tickle on the tongue. The afterburn was noticeable, but not overwhelming in any way - unless, of course, you're drinking it by the gallon like me. This would be a good hot sauce for spicing up party snacks without offending Aunt Jackie's meat-and-potatoes Pennsylvania Dutch sensibilities.
 
Verdict: I really want to like Cholula. But while I appreciate nuance, I don't use hot sauce for the subtleties. I want punch, burn and, yes, flavor. Cholula succeeds as a flavor enhancer, like salt, but doesn't bring as much to the proverbial table as I had hoped. It did, however, provide a nice distraction from the contraction action (now 15 minutes apart), and for that, I'm grateful.