Atsa spicy meatball!

Erica is in a snit because she discovered a bottle of Jersey Deathhot sauce in her cousin’s refrigerator.
During the mid-1990s, as my son was entering his teenage years and all that entails, he went bonkers for hot and spicy foods. We would go to the outdoor shows and someone would have a booth with what the claimed to be some hot and spicy food or sauce and he’d walk over to check it out. The guy manning the booth would warn him about how hot (spicy) the sauce/food was and Rick would just smile while he popped it in his mouth, shifted it side to side on his tongue like it was a fine wine and then pronounce it either acceptable or “blah.”

In middle school Rick had a public speaking assignment in which each student had to make something and then give a talk in front of the glass explaining the process. He chose to bake some cookies. He started with the Toll House recipe but substituted dried habenero peppers for the chocolate chips. He brought the tin of cookies to school and one smart ass swiped one and before Rick could warn him popped it in his mouth. The kid ended up in the nurse’s office. Rick ended up having a talk with the vice-principal who suggested the tin of cookies should remain in his office until Rick needed them for class. That one tin of cookies stayed in our house for nearly 6 months before we all agreed it was too dangerous to have them around any longer. They might spontaneously go off or something. So we fed them to the squirrels.

Once a month or so we would get some hot wings from Cluck-U Chicken outlet in Morristown. If you haven’t tried them, their wing sauce comes in Mild, Atomic, Nuclear, Thermo-Nuclear and 911*. (The * after the 911 is to tell you you must sign a waiver to obtain a helping of 911 wings.) Atomic was good. Nuclear was fine. Thermo-Nuclear needed to be eaten either very quickly with lots of fluids or very slowly with lots of fluids. Either way your lips and tongue were going to get scorched. We never did try the 911* wings since we reasoned we liked chicken too much to have it cooked BY the sauce rather than in it. (Actually, Rick might have tried the 911*s, he worked in a health food shop in the same little strip for several months as a senior in high school.)

At one time we had five or six different bottles of hot sauce in the fridge. This despite the fact that you could only use a couple of drops at a time unless you wanted a little mushroom cloud of potent sinus cleaner to rise from the stew pot.

One that we particularly liked was Dave’s Insanity Sauce which was at that time THE hottest sauce around. Others have surpassed it on the Scoville scale (DIS was originally 180,000 units compared to 2,000-5,000 for Tobasco Sauce) but you have to wonder why. Dave’s was as hot as you could stand without raising blisters (as long as you didn’t use too much!) yet added flavor to the dishes to which you judiciously applied it.
(More on Dave’s Insanity Sauce)

While at Boy Scout camp (both Rick and I worked on the staff) we got in the habit of carrying a bottle of Tabasco Peppersauceto the dining hall for meals. (One of those little Mini Maglite holsters would just about hold a small bottle and allow us to carry it everywhere.) It improved the flavor of many a scrabbled egg breakfast as well as some of the meat dishes at dinner without threatening the lives of the many younger scouts as Dave's might. Most individual military and trekking MREs come with a special, tiny one serving bottle of Tabasco Peppersauce that is both welcome and cute.

Put a couple of drops of Dave’s Insanity Sauce in a pot of chili or spaghetti sauce, or in your meatloaf or macaroni and cheese and you’ll have a meal that’s just about right. (Just don’t go putting too much in there, okay?)