Hallowsgiving

 There is a time, when stores start to put up their Christmas decorations, that is the wonderful period between when your kids are already bored of their Halloween outfits (you know, two weeks before they actually wore them on Halloween) and the festivities of gluttony where we sacrifice turkeys to worship the god of pig skins (and watching a sport called football where the foot is the part of the body that touches the ball the least).  I call this time Hallowsgiving and the staple of this time period is, of course, the Costco pumpkin pie.  Now those who are novices in celebrating Hallowsgiving might think any pumpkin pie would do, but those people are stupid and wrong.  Home made pumpkin pie is for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, or for people you love.  Costco pumpkin pie symbolizes my need to just eat pumpkin pie. As a result, the sanctity of the season requires further anointment in the blood of spicy chickens, and the combination can only be classified as a religious experience.  A velvety smooth pumpkin coats the tongue while sharp tines of flavor attack your taste buds like so many "mea culpas."  I give it 3 hail Mary's of awesomeness.

PSA: 1, 2, 3, Check your cap for me!

I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone about the dangers of improper Sriracha use.  Just the other day I was getting prepared to perform my next experiment and began to shake my holy bottle and next thing I knew the experiment became much broader than expected.  Suddenly I was tasked with finding out the quality of Sriracha on the dish washer, on my hair, on my face, on the floor, and on my daughter.  I learned 4 things that day:

1) My daughter took it like a champ.
2) Sriracha does not do anything for the flavor of hair.
3) Sriracha leaves an interesting burning sensation if left on the skin for too long (I didn't realize I had gotten my face until it was too late).
4) Always check your cap before you shake.

A couple of days later, the second time I made a mess I realized I should actually learn lesson 4.

I hope my cautionary tale of woe has inspired you to practice safe Sriracha.  While the burning is no longer there, the emotional scars may never heal, and no one can save that poor wasted Sriracha.  So join me in thinking of the children, and remember:

1, 2, 3, Check your cap for me!

This has been a public service announcement from the Foundation for Safe Sriracha.

Wakeup call

There's nothing quite like starting your morning with a kick (I know this for a fact since my son likes to kick me every morning when he crawls into bed with me).  This time, I have both my children to thank though.  Realizing that Daddy has a strange habit of putting hot sauce on everything, one of two sentences tend to flow from my daughter for every meal:
A) You should put hot sauce on that.
B) You're not going to put hot sauce on that are you?
Oddly enough I only hear "put hot sauce on that," and so I do!

First up is strawberry pancakes.  I like to make my pancakes small so that I can eat more of them.  Not only that, but the strawberries were special.  As you know by now my tastes are refined and, as such, only strawberries hand picked by either people with PhDs or child labor would suffice for my masterpiece.  The end result was mediocre at best.  Completely unremarkable in either direction.

And next we have French toast.  Here you see dots of red heaven swimming in a shallow lake of maple syrup hydrating a golden land of deliciousness.  Let's just say, I like French toast.  I will say this seemed to fair better than the pancake, mostly thanks to the sweetly spiced syrup (why I didn't syrup my pancake that day I will never know).  I wonder if a little cinnamon would kick it to the next level of amazing...but I digress...This is not a recipe blog. I repeat:
THIS IS NOT A RECIPE BLOG!
I refuse to fall down the trap of telling you how to re-create what I have made.  This is a chronicle of my adventures, and if you are foolhardy enough to follow in my steps, do so at your own peril.

Right then.  French toast: Two squirts out of two!

Considering this is the second breakfast experiment post I'd say Sriracha is now an essential part of a well balanced breakfast.  Until next time, keep it spicy!

Have Sriracha, Will Travel

Ladies and Gentlemen!  No thanks to your effort I have found what I have long been searching for: a portable solution to Sriracha cravings that even the TSA can't deny (and I get bonus points for it looking like a mini Sriracha bottle!).  These little treats are actually mini soy sauce bottles for bento boxes, so getting the thick awesome-sauce into the tiny opening was a little tricky, but well worth the effort.  So now stocked with a tiny army of spice...hrmm, maybe I should be careful about my wording with TSA mentioned earlier in the post...how about spice snuggles.  Yes, armed with my army of spice snuggles I am ready to wage war on the unsuspecting foods of the world.  Those 5 Guys thought they were safe from Sriracha bliss.  Froyo slept safe at night.  And movie popcorn has yet to experience the bad decision that I already attempted with home popped popcorn.  BUT NO MORE!  I have Sriracha, and I'm not afraid to use it...


Case in point, exhibit A to the right.  A humble can of salmon.  Yeah, ok, you should know I eat weird since I have this blog in the first place.  At least it is not the can of tuna I used to eat for lunches in high school right?  Anyway, this is a common work lunch of mine.  Sometimes I would mix it with a lentil soup, maybe put it over rice.  Not today.  BAM (as a particular food pornographer might say).  Empty the mini bottle right over my lunch and I discovered 2 things.
  1) These bottles don't hold nearly enough...good thing I have 20.   2) Salmon covered in red is a good thing.
This is a fairly typical application of the sauce of the gods (adding it to fish) so there is not much surprising to say other than it gave a wonderful pop in the middle of the work day.  Mission success.  I give it 2 mini s-bottles out of 1 (because I wish I had 2 to really get proper seasoning).  That comes out to a 200% rating, so I'd say that qualifies for regular adoption.

Memorial Daze

Mid grilling for lunch an idea struck (which was only partly beer fueled).  What better way to memorialize the sacrifices of our forefathers (aside from the excessive consumption of meat and retail services) than to create a desert that wholly encapsulates their suffering while underlining the epic grandeur of their result!  The answer is here!  The red, white, and blue desert you see before you!

Ice cream is a no brainer, you can't get much more American than claiming ice cream is American.  Blueberries are a perfect choice because not only are they blue, not only do they have stars on them, but they are ACTUALLY one of the few native American fruits.  And then of course, the S-man, Sriracha itself, excessively American: a sauce of Thai origin, manufactured in the US, by a Vietnamese guy, with Chinese lettering all over it.

"But wait!" you say. "You said that Sriracha on ice cream was terrible!"  To which I respond, "YES!  That is where the encapsulation of suffering comes in."  But like all U.S. military actions, this backfired and had the complete opposite intended result.  This, my friends, tasted amazing.

Now firstly it helps that the ice cream was not freezerburned this time, so the ice cream with chili-juice was not so terrible, but not really great.  The blueberries however added their acidity to act as little flavor bombs, freeing a new taste experience all over my tongue.  Yes my friends, I was shocked and awed because this desert tastes like freedom.

So raise a glass to your fellow human.  Support those that need support but not the stupidity that got them there.  Eat well, but not too much.  And most of all, try something new...and then add some Sriracha to it.

Merry Memorial Day.

Just Deserts

 I figured if I'm going to catch up with all the amazing things I have been trying I'm going to have to start doubling up on the post content (and even that might not be enough).  First up we have pineapple popsicle! Remember my theory that citrus goes with the red sauce of glory?  Well good thing pineapple isn't citrus cause man that was totally mediocre!  Not bad, not good, solidly "meh."  It was so much "meh" that I dipped the popsicle into the plate drippings to make sure that it wasn't great.  To bad, so sad.  I'm wondering if it's the cold that just made it so there wasn't much of a flavor in general.  Plus it was kind of tricky to deposit and taste in the first place.  I'm a fan of the whole mouth method (the popsicle goes in my mouth like a lollypop...how else do you prevent dripping???) so I had to actually adjust my eating method to prevent from just getting a mouthful of S-juice (which is not a bad thing, just goes against the spirit of the experiment).  All in all this one gets a 5 meh's out of 5.

Next up we have what looks like a half eaten bowl of apple sauce, because it is!  I was sharing a bowl with my wife (who is not so much of a fan of dying things red unless it is with actual dye) and when she stated she was done I went in for the kill.  This surprisingly was actually pretty good.  I think I'd have to get the ratio just right to make it a masterpiece, but who ever thought of hot apple sauce?
Me.
I did.
And that makes me brilliant!
I feel like this opens up a whole new world of sposibilities (yeah, that's a new word now, it means Sriracha possibilities...keep up). Hot apples (done, but not yet posted, and oddly, not as good), hot-hot apple pie, hot-hot-hot apple cider ! (the third hot is for the cinnamon stick I chew on after drinking the hot-hot apple cider).
In the end, this get's the Aladdin trophy for a whole new world!

Be Cool Daddyo

My levels are getting dangerously low and I feel like I still haven't gotten weird enough yet.  By now the craving has permeated my entire being, but I still want more!  So after my dinner of Sriracha on Sriracha with a side of Sriracha, I look to desert and find a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Oh yeah, I did it.  Look over there ----------------------------->

Now I don't know if it was the freezer burn, but this was the one thing that I have to say was NOT good with the heavenly spice of the heavens.  It had the texture of ice cream with syrup (good), but the flavor jumping back and forth between creamy, sugary, and salt...not unlike lobster ice cream (which I also have had with similar disgust).

I will try this again just to be sure exactly how bad it is (and I think that a different flavor ice cream might be better suited), but for now, this gets like 5 Facebook thumbs down.