Month: October 2008

From Blair Lazar:

Dear Chilipal,

P.S. Tomorrow Night I will put my limited 89 Bottle production of 2008 Halloween available for Pre-Order. They are Special and the #89 represents my 20 years of having the pleasure of getting to know the most amazing group of people I could ever hoped to have met in the Chilihead Community that have become such a part of my life. Thank you.

CLEARFIELD, Pa. – It took Brad Sciullo 4 hours and 39 minutes to finish a marathon. A meat marathon, that is. The 5-foot-11, 180-pound western Pennsylvania chef is the first person to eat a monstrosity called the Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser: a 15-pound burger with toppings and a bun that brought the total weight to 20.2 pounds.

The mountain of beef is the product of Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub, about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Clearfield.

Sciullo, 21, of Uniontown, said he was surprised he finished the sandwich Monday. “About three hours into it, things got tough,” he said.

When asked what possessed him to eat a burger that big, Sciullo said: “I wanted to see if I could.”

The burger included a bun, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, mild banana peppers and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard and relish, pub owner Dennis Liegey said.

For completing the challenge in the under-five-hour time limit, Sciullo won $400, three T-shirts, a certificate “and a burger hangover, as I call it,” Liegey said.

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Ever try to print a page from a website and come up three or four pages of unusable garbage, such as the footer (which you don’t care about) appearing by itself on page three and the navigation or banner ads

Ever find yourself in the middle of a recipe and find yourself out of an herb or spice in your kitchen? Fear not, for here is a handy list of close substitutions of herbs and spices that should get you

Just in time for Halloween! Ever wanted to know how to create goopy, green slime? Here’s a tutorial on how to make fake snot. MWAAHAHAHAA! (me attempting evil-sounding laugh)

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We just returned from the Fiery Foods Show, held again in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I had a lot of people asking for the hottest chile pepper we offered. I smiled, not at their extreme passion for scoville units, but because I couldn’t supply them with anything hotter than our Coyote Trail Green Chile Sauce. Sure, the Green Chile Sauce has some heat, but nothing like what these guys were looking for. I thought back to our departure from a sound business plan-the time we were also in search of the heat…

Cleo “Jake” Calloway, Jr., president and owner of Jake’s Barbeque Sauce and Seasonings Company, is one of the most passionate people I’ve ever talked to, and seems to be totally into what he does. He’s extremely helpful and accommodating, too – I gave him a list of sample questions that I would plan to ask him a few days in advance of our phone conversation, and he e-mailed me back condensed but detailed answers to each one, which aided tremendously in the editing of this interview. And just speaking to him, he exuded an honest enthusiasm and love of what he does that it was darn near infectious. It was hard not to like this guy and what he does; and after reviewing his Barbecue Sauces and his Basil Marinade, I would say he does it quite well.

Before interviewing him, I had only known him as Cleo and did not know of his nickname, so it led me to start out by asking him…

Scott: How did the company get its name and who is Jake?

Jake: Jake is my great-grandfather, whom I was nicknamed after. After developing my first sauce and gaining approval on the flavoring from my parents and I was talking with them about the products when my mother mentioned that I reminded her of her grandfather Jake. Jake was an old time barbecuer and spent hours upon hours perfecting his sauces and dry seasonings. She said that I have that same level of diligence and persistence and with that I name the company Jake’s…

Americans definitely love their beer! Here are some interesting graphics that show just how much beer Americans drink in one year:

Find your weapons of thirst destruction right here with the Bullet Ice Cube Tray. Shaped like actual bullets from an AK-47 rifle, these will ensure you’ll have a killer drink every time (okay, enough with the bad jokes). You can buy them online right here for £7.99 (approximately $15.15 US)

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Need information on a variety of audio-related topics? Unsure of a topic or musical term? Then check out the Audiophile Wiki. It’s the brainchild of Paul McGowan of PS Audio, and is built for both the novices and experts alike. But like any wiki, it’s a work in progress and benefits from the input of everyone — including you. If you’d like to help edit and add topics, please sign up and make this the go-to sound resource.

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Several months back I had mentioned that Black Label Society/Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde was teaming up with Blair’s to create Berserker Brand Hot Sauces. Well, the sauce formulas have been made, the bottles are ready to be filled and labeled and shipped to your door after October 15th. You can pre-order the Berserker Hot Sauces from Zakk’s site ot the Blair website.

And what kind of scorching elixirs have Zakk and Blair concocted? Berserker is available in four flavors: Zakk Wylde’s Original Hot Sauce (mild), Wylde’s Sonic Brew Hot Sauce (medium), Zakk Wylde’s Stronger Than Death Hot Sauce (hot), and Zakk Wylde’s Shot to Hell Hot Sauce (extremely hot). It is advertised on both sites that Shot to Hell “contains ingredients 600 times hotter than a jalapeno chili”. If this is using the same semantics that is on Blair’s Mega Death and Jersey Death (which are advertised on the bottles as having ingredients 500 times and 750 times jalapeno heat, respectively), then this sauce is pushing 600,000 Scoville Heat Units. Yowza! That’s pretty darn hot.

Here’s a clever contraption that should be added to my Ultimate Guide to Drying Hot Peppers guide: a homemade solar-powered dehydrator. The homegrownevolution.com site has a nice little write-up describing their successful experiences with one they had built, plus provide a few links with instructions on how to construct your own. I still think an electric food dehydrator is the best method of drying fruits and vegetables, but if you’re looking to save a few dollars on electricity costs one of these solar dehydrators may be a great alternative.

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From what I’ve heard (I’ve yet to try it myself), acorn flour has a very distinct, very tasty flavor, adding a robustness and nuttiness to recipes that hum-drum wheat flour lacks. Here’s an online tutorial on how to create acorn

CaptureFox is a cool new Firefox extension that can record your screen movements and voice (through a microphone, of course) to create screencasts. It’s great for producing videos for on-screen demos, lessons and tutorials. Just in case you’re wondering, this