Holy Hot Hell

For a couple of years, a friend and I had an event every week at work called Hot Sauce Humpday. We liked hot food and thought it would be fun to have salsas and hot sauces every Wednesday. Eventually it turned into people bringing in sauces they had found around town and on vacations and trying to burn our mouths and o-rings.

After some time, all the salsas started to run together so I started up a spreadsheet to keep track of what we thought of the salsas. As I was digging around in my My Documents folder today I found the Hot Sauce Humpday Rankings.xls spreadsheet having never seen the light of day. I don't remember a lot of these salsas but I'll try to comment on the ones I do. Luckily part of the spreadsheet captured people's comments about each salsa. Also included was the top 5 ingredients listed on the label (which we thought was very indicative of heat and taste). We also had a severity level otherwise known as heat level, with 1 being the highest.

La Victoria Red Salsa Jalapena extra hot - Red jalapeno peppers, water, red california chiles, onions, tomato; Sev 3; Good flavor but pedestrian extra hot, it's a perfect number 3, Good for eating mass quantities not very hot though. I remember this salsa since it can be found in any grocery store in town. It was pretty popular with the people who didn't like really hot salsas. I liked it, but not enough to ever buy it.

Original Juan's Jalapeno con queso Batch 37 - Water, tomatoes, cheese mix (cheddar and blue), whey, reduced lactose whey; Sev 4; Should be called jalapeno con crappo. Who puts blue cheese in a hot sauce? Not fit for a dog, I'll wait for batch 38. Tastes like a bad, waxy cardboard box, I think they dropped in some Bertie Botts earwax beads in the batch, Cheese tastes like toilet waste. This was obviously not a salsa we enjoyed. We actually hated it so much we called Original Juan's and asked if we could exchange it which they agreed to do. They were unsurprised that it was unliked. Of all the salsas we tried, this was by far the worst. It has actually prevented me from buying queso in a jar from any company.

Original Juan's Louisiana Style Batch #218 - Malt vinegar, habanero and cayenne
peppers, water, tomato paste, corn syrup; Sev 3; Best vinegar based sauce I've tried, Too much vinegar, Vinegarry but has nice flavor and a needed twinge of heat, Tastes OK, but it's not hot. I have no recollection of this sauce.

Mrs Renfro's Habanero Salsa - Tomatoes, water, jalapeno peppers, onions, green chile peppers; Sev 2; Looks like glue, there's no taste, Long lasting heat with no taste, Brings some heat but doesn't bring much taste, I am more willing to dip my chip in this because Mrs. Renfro wouldn't make it too hot for her grandchildren. I remember this was did have some good heat as most salsas billing themselves as a habanero salsa. Another common property of most habanero salsas is lack of taste and Mrs. Renfro definitely didn't add much taste.

Original Juan's Pain 100% - habanero peppers, water, natural pepper flavoring, vinegar; Sev 1; Good pain, Starts slow but comes on with a vengeance, 10 minutes of torture, Fiery hot, cured my cough. The cured my cough comment was mine and it did cure my cough. We went over to Original Juan's to get this one in the morning and I coughed the entire way over there and the entire way back. I don't think I coughed all afternoon after eating it. This is a good salsa, you just can't eat a whole bunch of it in one sitting.

Jose Madrid Salsa X Hot - Peeled ground tomatoes, New Mexico chilies, green chili, tomato concentrate, water; Sev 1; Tastes great, would make a good taco sauce, Good taco sauce, I love the smell, Authentic mexican taste, Great flavor, tastes like mexican food; I don't really remember this one other than we liked it.

Jose Madrid Salsa Spanish Verde XX Hot - Tomatillos, chilies (New Mexico), green tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, onions; Sev 1; Makes you want to tear your tongue out of your mouth, Worst tasting salsa ever, Tastes like ear wax but is very hot. Stay away from this one, it's horrible.

505 Medium Salsa - Flame roasted green chiles, tomatoes, jalapenos, garlic, lime juice; Sev 3; Not hot but tasty. I summarized the 5 comments because they were all the same. I don't remember this one at all.

Senor Stan's Original Salsa Hot - Tomatoes, jalapeno, onion, green onion, cilantro; Sev 3; Tastes like a soupy cilantro salad, Not bad if you like cilantro soup, What's that weird bitter taste?, I thought it was pretty good, Tastes like an old rusty can. This one was kind of divisive I think based on the cilantro. I remember cilantro taste being prominent but it didn't make it bad. This was just kind of an average salsa.

Margarita's Hot Salsa - Tomatoes, jalapeno, onion, tomato puree, salt; Sev 3; I found Jimmy Buffett's lost shaker of salt, What's that weird taste?. This one was salty and not very good.

Three Banditos Salsa Habanero Hot - Tomatoes, water, green chiles, fresh onion, jalapenos; Sev 3; Chunkilicious, Great with a lime chip, not very hot. I remember liking the lime chips on this day. People from all over the building would bring us chips and sometimes they were flavored, we never kept track of the chips. I would bet that I've had every kind of chip available in town.

Baboon Ass Habanero hot sauce - Water, onion, vinegar, habanero mash, jalapeno mash; Sev 2; Brings the heat with an adequate taste. Vinegarry but has good pepper flavor. Generally we liked to stay away from novelty salsas, you know the kind, where they spend more time coming up with the name and label than they probably do on the ingredients. But this one was pretty good. I think this came back from vacation with someone.

Rudy's Aztec Gold hot sauce - Tomatoes, tomato sauce, onion, garlic, jalapenos; Sev 3; Muy Blando, Even [guy who couldn't handle hot food] would yawn after eating this. No recollection.

Fiesta Smoked Jalapeno - Diced Tomatoes, water, tomato paste, jalapenos, chipotle; Sev 3; Almost barbeque sauce, That is smoky. As a general rule we didn't like salsas with chipotle peppers. This one was more of a topping for a hamburger or something than it was a salsa.

Tostitos Mild Salsa - Tomato puree, diced tomatoes in tomato juice, green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, onion; Sev 4; Tastes good, no heat, Who the hell brought mild salsa to hot sauce humpday, candy. This made me mad when I went over to the salsa table to find out what my free meal of the day was going to be. Friggin' mild mass distributed salsa. I would have like to have fired the culprit.

Hell on the Red Mild Salsa - Tomatoes, onions, jalapeno, red pepper, water; Sev 4; Heck on the red, As mild as Pat Boone. I've been pretty disappointed in the entire Hell on the Red oeuvre.

Original Juan's Habanero Garlic - Diced Tomatoes, water, tomato paste, diced yellow onions, bell peppers; Sev 2; Good way to get rid of (internal) worms, I really like this, It has good heat that lasts a while, However the wife won't want to be around because of the garlic. One of the better Original Juan's salsas, but not for everyday eating.
Chi Chi's Fiesta Salsa Hot - Tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, water, tomato paste, onions; Sev 3; Tastes very fresh and has some heat for a national mass market brand. I remember being surprised at this one. We generally didn't like the restaurant salsas especially national chains, but this one was pretty good. Probably a nice one to have around all the time.

The Source – Sev 1; A molecule will do you, I built it up too much thinking it would be out of this world hot, It was very, very hot though, The hottest sauce in the world, made me skeptical of my will to live from the point of tasting on, I truly didn't think I would survive much less want to. This was actually served to us by one of the owners of Original Juan's. He dipped a toothpick in the bottle and dabbed it on a chip. I thought I was going to choke to death after swallowing it (ladies you know the feeling). I won't be eating the Source again but it was worth it for the experience. It reminds me of the time I killed a drifter just to get an erection. Everyone should do these sorts of things at least once.

Da Bomb – Orange juice, habaneros, chipotle peppers, water, natural pepper flavoring; Sev 1; Napalm on a chip, 100% Pain on steroids, Hotter than Dave's Insanity and better tasting too, WhOOh!! That's hot. Da Bomb is a watered down The Source. We bought a bottle of it and I think it's still about three-quarters full even though we ate it every week from the time of purchase. It's nice to add in to chili or some bland salsa.

Wild & Hot Frontier Traders Habanero Salsa - Yellow onions, diced tomatoes, water, green peppers, cider vinegar; Sev 3; Good flavor but not very wild or hot, Tastes good, not very much heat but enough flavor to keep me coming back. No recollection of this one.

Screamin' Mimi's Sweet Hot Salsa - Tomatoes, peppers, onions, jalapenos, vinegar; Sev 3; Why does it say hot? It's definitely sweet but not hot, I don't know what is in there that tastes so bad, but this sucks, f…ing horrible. I guess we didn't like this one that much.

Green Mountain Gringo Salsa Roasted Garlic - Ripe tomatoes, fresh onions, fresh pasilla peppers, fire roasted garlic, fresh jalapeno peppers; Sev 3; Smoky with some flavor, could be hotter. Apparently, pasilla peppers aren't very hot. I don't remember this one either.

Eventually we had had every kind of salsa and the whole event kind of petered out. But it was very popular within the building. I would recommend this for any office setting where there are people who like eating hot foods. You get to try a lot of different salsas for free or like $5 every 2 or 3 months. If you're someone who like really hot salsas, people will bring you chips just to watch you sweat.

I mentioned earlier in the post that we went to Original Juan's which is like the salsa version of Boulevard. I set up a tour with them and they couldn't have been nicer. They don't have regularly scheduled tours, but if you call and ask and have 10 – 15 people, they will guide you around. It was pretty fun. Just be careful if you get to try The Source.

Mucho Macho Nacho

I love nachos. Stella loves nachos. Everyone loves nachos. These are my nachos, the ones I make on a weekly basis especially during football season. Because of Stella and my varying love of the spicy heat I have to make them half and half. But nachos are a pleasing meal for everyone.

It really is a simple meal to put together. I fry up about a pound of ground chuck, some yellow onion and one diced jalapeno and once the hamburger is brown I put in some Vard mexican seasoning and a 1/4 cup of water and let it simmer (if you want some extra protein mix in a can of black beans). You can use the packets of mexican seasoning you buy at the grocery or Penzey's Mexican seasoning, we just prefer a freshly made mix.

I use to use the whole sheet pan to line up the chips (You've got to use some thick chips, we use On the Border chips) but now I like to stack and make a little volcano out of them. Once I have a nice bottom layer of chips I cover them with about half the meat mixture. Then on my side of the nachos I sprinkle one diced jalapeno*. Then sprinkle on some diced tomato and cover the layer with about 2 cups of a cheddar colby jack mix of cheese. Then repeat with another full layer of chips, meat, 'penos, 'matoes and cheese. If you have some green onion now's the time to chop some up and sprinkle it on top with any leftover jalapenos and tomatoes.

*For you people that are from KC, I'd like to inform you that if you go to a grocery store anywhere south of KC, jalapenos are fresh and plentiful. It really is a disgrace what kind of jalapeno selection we can get in the grocery store in KC. Jalapenos are not supposed to be soft and wrinkly like XO's penis.

You pop that in a 350 degree oven and wait. Once all the cheese is melted in the middle pull them out. In the Vard household we have what we call "nacho spoon" to scoop out servings of nachos (in reality "nacho spoon" is an old slotted spoon that came with a Fry Daddy I bought in college). You pile a glob of sour cream on your plate and eat away. It's a fine meal, not particularly healthy, but a fine meal especially when you consider it costs about $5 to make.

I made a batch for my fantasy football draft this year and used 4 jalapenos and 2 serranos. That was the hottest batch I've made, I was sweating all through the draft. It was worth it since I won my league again, the second year in a row. Sometimes you get a real hot batch of jalapenos and your nachos turn your mouth to fire, it's fun to find out. When you use fresh ingredients you can't be sure of what their taste is going to be.

Perturbed Whopper

I've eaten at Burger King less than 10 times in my entire life. I think in those dining experiences I've had 1 Whopper. The last time I went to Burger King was to get the steakhouse burger, which wasn't good enough for me to ever go back for a second one. I remember not really liking the Whopper either but I was on a lunch break from a fantasy baseball auction draft and I was trying to come up with a plan to buy the Giambi brothers (incidentally this occurred the day after the famous Cowbell sketch was on SNL, amazing what one remembers).

So when I saw the commercials for the Angry Whopper while watching football last weekend I thought that that's a burger I can get behind, even if it's at Burger King. I finally got my chance to get one on my work from home day (since there is no fast food hamburgers in downtown). I drove over to the BK at 76th and Metcalf near the Bull E. Vard mansion to grab my burger.

As I pulled into my parking spot* I noticed a BK worker wandering around on the sidewalk probably grabbing a smoke. I also noticed a large box with a BK bag sitting next to it sitting in the handicapped parking place less than 5 feet away from that sidewalk. As I got out of the car the BK kid walked back inside leaving the trash in the parking lot. I thought to myself, this is what kind of establishment I'm entering, one where the employees don't care enough to keep clean. I was tempted to tell the manager about the employee's malfeasance. But I had bigger fish to fry.

*I don't go to drive-thrus, I like to look people in the eye when I order. I think that if these minimum wage people look in my baby blue eyes they will think twice about doing anything to my food. I also like to keep my eyes on them. Stella makes fun of me all the time for going into the store.

The guy who took my order looked like the Shamwow guy with microphone and everything. At $4.19 the Angry Whopper is a little expensive for a fast food burger but I thought it would probably be worth it. They also sell double and triple Angry Whoppers, I think I saw a punch card where you get a free angioplasty with the purchase of 5 triple Angry Whoppers.

I brought my Angry Whopper home and opened it up to take the tomatoes out. As I did, I noticed a real lack of jalapenos, maybe 3 or 4 sliced ones didn't seem to angry to me. The burger had about 8 or 10 pretty thick onion strings, which according to the marketing had been whipped while growing, much like Bing Crosby's kids. Everything was covered by a pepperjack type mayo.

The first bite I had had no anger at all. It didn't even seem spicy. But it tasted good and tasting good goes a long way. On bites where I got all of the components; meat, Crosby onion, jalapeno and pepperjack, I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately there were only 2 or 3 of those bites. On bites without all the components the meat and mayo carried enough flavor to be enjoyable but wasn't very angry.

I may have gotten a badly put together burger, but overall it was pretty good. I'm certainly willing to take a shot again and maybe I will get double the amount of jalapenos I got this time, which I'm sure will take the Angry Whopper from pretty good to great and from perturbed to actually angry.

Angry Whopper

Thanks to the wonders of actually watching live TV, I found out what I'm having for dinner tomorrow night, the Angry Whopper. I love me a burger with some jalapenos on it. Just for fun, here's a couple of foreign commercials for the Angry Whopper. The German commercial is one more data point that you should be especially wary of Germans (WWI and WWII are other data points).

Winter Cheese Dip

Every year when the temperature drops below freezing or when the first snow falls I get hungry for what's called in our house, cheese dip. But, it's not ordinary cheese dip, it is served cold but is blazing hot. Grandma Vard used to make it only in the winter and pour it into any kind of container she had laying around. And it was a big deal when she brought over a batch. My first memory of eating cheese dip, I was eating it out of a Cool Whip bowl while watching Mel Brooks' "To Be or Not To Be" (any time I see Mel Brooks, I also get hungry for cheese dip). I am now the official Vard family cheese dip maker. Every time I go back to Wichita I either bring some with me or my brother makes me make some while I'm at his house.

This is not for the feint of heart, so only make it if you enjoy hot food. It's very simple to make and only takes 4 ingredients; 1 can of stewed tomatoes, a couple of cloves of garlic, Trappey's sport peppers and a brick of Velveeta cheese. Empty the stewed tomatoes, peeled garlic cloves and peppers (make sure you drain all of the vinegar first and use the Trappey's peppers pictured above) into your blender and liquefy them. Verify everything is liquefied, you don't want any chunks of garlic or peppers in your cheese dip. If you want it a little extra hot you can throw in a jalapeno. In my younger days I used to put in a habanero but my o-ring actually developed the ability to talk so it could tell me not to do that anymore. Every instance of me applying salve to my o-ring has been directly correlated to habaneros in cheese dip. When everything is liquefied dump the mixture (it's actually a pretty good salsa) into a big pot and put on a burner at about medium heat. Open up your brick of Velveeta (you must use Velveeta, not some cheap store brand, it's well worth the extra dollar or two) and rip it into little chunks. Add the chunks a couple at a time while stirring (stir continuously or you will get burned cheese at the bottom of your pan) when they melt add some more. You can dip chips into the mixture and eat it while you are melting the cheese, this is the only acceptable time to eat the cheese dip when it's warm. When you've melted all the cheese take the cheese dip off the burner.


I prefer to dump mine into 1 big bowl and eat it from there over the next couple of weeks. But you can split it into smaller portions if you want. The thing is, though, you need to make the decision right then, you can't go splitting up a big bowl after the cheese has cooled (you can but you would be breaking the rules). Dump the cheese dip into the bowl(s) you have selected and let it sit on your counter for about an hour. It will develop a nice crust (pictured below) like a creme brulee. Once it cools down to room temperature you can put a lid on it and put it in the refrigerator. If you don't wait long enough you will get some condensation that can threaten the little crust on top.

Once the cheese dip has been in the refrigerator about 4 hours, it is ready to eat. I actually like to wait until the next day so that it is good and cool, but sometimes you just can't wait. I have a method of eating cheese dip that is a bit manic. I poke a hole in the middle with a chip and continue to eat from that hole as long as I can, it's my version of ice fishing. Also, most people will eat cheese dip with tortilla chips, but I like it best with Wavy Lay's (they're the only potato chip that won't break when you're trying to dip them, cheese dip has a very heavy custardy texture). My father used to eat it with pretzels or crackers if we didn't have any chips, I never tried that, it seemed gross. Also, you should not drink anything while you eat cheese dip, your mouth will become a firepit if a liquid is introduced to it. It's seriously best to just remain thirsty while eating.

I've never known cheese dip to get old or go bad so you don't have to worry about trying to cut the recipe in half. I eat cheese dip in lieu of meals 2-3 times a week during the winter. Stella won't touch it. I've put my sister-in-law on notice because I caught her scooping some out of a bowl and warming it in the microwave before eating it, ruining the cold bowl and the portion she warmed up. You just have to trust that it is better served cold. Cheese dip will definitely improve your winter season and your bowels will never be cleaner.