Over the weekend, the Bedfellow came for an amazing, whirlwind visit, and the first thing she sat down to eat after a long flight was a sandwich. Distance is a cruel addition to our partnership, and it has added food jealousy to our discourse.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing. It sounds like chips.”
“It’s actually chips…and a sandwich.”
“What kind of sandwich?” Continue reading “Mustard & Co. Smoky BBQ”
Tag: condiment
Farm to People July 2014 Box: Smoke and Spice
I went on an adventure today on a borrowed scooter. I was chased by wild dogs, no big deal, don’t worry about it. I’m exhausted now and starving. When I got home after driving through a scary park, ogling silkworm nests and eating coconut cream pie, I got an awesome box in the mail. I’ve been getting into subscription boxes lately, and when Farm to People offered to send me a box, I was keen to try their selection. I’ve got to admit, I was a little nervous- with all the specialty foods I’ve tried, I figured there would be some repeats, if not most of them. Somehow, perfection and snacks aligned– not only were there items from new companies I hadn’t heard of, but there were things I’d been ogling for months.
Continue reading “Farm to People July 2014 Box: Smoke and Spice”
My Brother’s Salsa Peach Tomatillo
Midway through the fifth season, I found a sick bird fluttering on the ground while I was walking to and from the center of town. It looked alert and fine and none of its wings appeared to be broken, but it couldn’t keep its head up. I sidestepped around it and then I came back. I carried it in my hands for an hour and dripped water into its beak from a water fountain until I found a styrofoam cup and kleenex from a sports memorabilia store and brought it home with me.
Spicy Week II: Fruit
Welcome to fruity night. The final countdown! We’ve spanned so many sauces over the course of a week. Thank you for going along on this horrible voyeuristic journey. If you’ll excuse us, our tastebuds need reconstructive surgery. 
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Spicy Week II: XXXX
We came.
We cried.
We tasted.
There was a cat.
It needs no introduction. Spicy Week II presents, the ultra-spicy collection.
Spicy Week II: Eclectic
Yes, today was supposed to be XXX.
Yes, I know I’ve changed the order.
You do not know what my body has gone through in the last 24 hours.
If there is any poster child for body autonomy, it is me, right now, lacking autonomy from my own body.
Holy crap, I kid you not.
All that aside, I’ve decided to treat myself to the most exciting and diverse selection of the sauces before I subject various friends and family members to the insanely hot ones on my trip home tomorrow. Today won’t put me completely out of the woods- I’m trying sauces with ingredients from avocado to salted caramel, to top-notch political preferences to pumpkin. Whew.
Also, someone sent me a holster, which means that now that my first semester is officially done, I’ve spent every minute of the last 24 hours pretending to be Doc Holliday. I’m your huckleberry.
Sauce count: 18 (and five non-sauce goodies!)
Sauce total: 73 
Continue reading “Spicy Week II: Eclectic”
Spicy Week II: Hot
Day three of Spicy Week and I’m rediscovering what it means to introduce fiber, green vegetables, and daily exercise into my system. Funnily enough, this is also how I felt when I did the juice cleanse. Is hot sauce the next diet fad? You heard it here first. While supping on a sumptuous mixture of chia seeds, pecan-cranberry oatmeal, and peanut butter, please let me regale you with the legends and lore of the sauces boldly known as ‘hot.’
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Spicy Week II: Medium
We’re on a roll now, and are discovering exactly how many McNuggets two mid-sized women can eat before they reach a threshold that they can never return from. Answer: roughly seven. Yeah, we’re no Furious Petes. But we prevailed, and went to the gym, and took a hot soak, and now we’re on to Day II of Spicy Week II: The Medium. Hartford Medium. Medium-sized Appetites. There are no more puns.
I introduced the feature last night, and wanted to take some time today to tell you how our testing works. Taking a few notes from famed hot sauce critic Scott Roberts and the team at Chile Pepper magazine, we decided to divide the sauces into categories: mild, medium, hot, xxx, eclectic sauces and snacks, and fruit-based sauces, with an extra day at the end to rank the winners of each category and crown an overall winner of Spicy Week II.
We ranked the sauces using the website’s 0-10 rankings. For reference, 5 is the midway benchmark for rankings- average, run-of-the-mill hot sauce, like what you’d find at a restaurant next to the salt and pepper, and the ratings move up from there. We tried to explain our reasoning in each blurb, along with what we liked and didn’t like about each sauce.
Sauces tasted: 31
Sauce total: 55
Continue reading “Spicy Week II: Medium”