Holding On for Dear Heat

It was another cold, gray day here; I had a long day at work; and I was singularly uninspired to photograph anything. So instead, I thought I'd introduce you to a little corner of my personal world:

My brother-in-law, Greg Foster, who lives in San Diego with my sister and their college-age son, spent at least a decade producing and marketing hot sauce under the name "Inferno Farms." His lineup of sauces went, as he would say, "From Mild to Wild." The hottest, Volcanus (on the right), is made with Carolina reapers, one of the hottest peppers in the world. 

Here's a few things you should know about Greg: He can tolerate an insane level of heat (spiciness from peppers). He has been known to put pure extract (essentially capsaicin, the chemical that gives hot peppers their heat) directly on food. So it may not surprise you to know that he holds several records in the Guiness Book of World Records, including the most raw Carolina reapers eaten in a minute and the fastest time to eat 10 raw Carolina reapers (33.15 seconds)! Out of the dozen or so hot sauces he created, most of them trend toward the very hot side.

Me? I once tried a piece of beef jerky flavored with reaper the size of my pinky thumbnail and nearly died on the floor choking. I do not have a particularly high tolerance for spicy food. But here's the thing: Greg's sauces are masterpieces of flavor -- to my tastebuds completely different from nearly every sauce you can find in a conventional grocery store or market, which tend to be vinegary and uninteresting. Greg's sauces are rich and complex. 

I have two favorites, neither shown here: "Where There's Smoke" and "Nacho Taco." Two or three times a week I have the same breakfast -- a fried egg, avocado, and WTS sauce. It is the most divine breakfast in the world! For my delicate tongue, the avocado helps to absorb the most extreme spiciness of the hot sauce, leaving me with a warm, mellow "afterglow." The Nacho Taco sauce became a regular staple on baked potatoes. I didn't even care much about baked potatoes until I started putting Greg's sauce on them!

The reason there's no Nacho Taco in the photo is because about a year ago, sadly but understandably, Greg closed his business. I know from attending one or two hot sauce expos that it is a ridiculously crowded field where an individual has a hard time getting a foothold, let alone to make it a worthwhile investment of time and money. (It was at an expo that I tried that beef jerky and also saw Greg defend his world record, one of many times he's done that.)

Now, I have used up my last bottle of Nacho Taco and am starting on my last one of Where There's Smoke. I have about 5 or 6 more bottles of different flavors that I am less attached to, but when my favorites run out, I'll probably go through those.

Inferno Farms was a brilliant and spicy moment in time, perhaps the likes of which I will never taste again.