Several weeks a go I gave a rant about not funding or promoting any Kickstarter campaigns in the future, particularly ones for companies with products I was unfamiliar with and whose owners I did not really know.

Now I’ve come across a rare exception to the above rule in the guise of Lucky Dog Hot Sauces. Not only do I know the owner, Scott Zalkind, to be a great and reputable guy (you can listen to my interview with him here), but both myself and my son Kevin have reviewed and love his all-purpose, pepper-based condiments, and found that his output keeps getting better and better.

Chile Pepper Facts

Compiled by Eric Vinje of Cosmic Chile and Scott Roberts

• Two of the founding fathers of our country, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, are both known to have grown chiles.

• Capsaicin is a colorless, pungent, crystalline compound, C18,H27,NO3.

• The shorter the molecular chain, the hotter the pepper.

• “Chili” and “chile” are different spellings of the pungent fruit of the capsicum, also called chilli (in the UK, Australia and New Zealand), chile pepper or chili pepper. But in the U.S., the spelling “chili” is a shortening of chili con carne, a ground beef stew that incorporates chile powder or chile peppers. And Chile, capitalized, is a country in South America.

• The heat from a chile pepper is concentrated in the interior veins or ribs near the seed heart, not in the seeds as is commonly believed…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STEVE’S HOT DOGS ON THE HILL RETURNS TO GRASS ROOTS FOR EXPANSION EFFORT
Local musician owner Steve Ewing plans to crowd fund $15,000 to Expand to Tower Grove East

St. Louis, Mo., May 9, 2014 — Steve’s Hot Dogs on the Hill announces plans to expand to a second location in Tower Grove East in the City of St. Louis. Steve Ewing, restaurant owner and front man of the popular St. Louis-based band The Urge, plans to raise funds through the crowd funding website Indiegogo to help fund the expansion. Expansion of the restaurant is happening in tandem with the reopening of the famed Tick Tock Tavern at 3459 Magnolia. The campaign to fund Steve’s Hot Dogs’ expansion will launch June 2 and run through July 5.

Crowd funding is giving Steve, a St. Louis native, the opportunity to directly contact his grassroots following that has fueled his creative endeavors for more than two decades. Fans, customers and supporters of the Tower Grove neighborhood will be asked to support Steve’s Hot Dogs by making financial contributions to help cover the final expansion costs such as paint, flooring, appliances and a new kitchen. Giving levels will begin at $10 and continue up to $5,000. Each giving level will be associated with a specific perk such as free hot dogs and merchandise to a house concert given by Steve Ewing…

Scott Zalkind (whom I interviewed for the Firecast Podcast last year) has proven himself to be one of the brightest talents to enter the hot sauce pool in the 2010s with his superb Lucky Dog Hot Sauces. Two years ago I covered his first three sauces in a review and gave them all above-average marks, and my son Kevin praised them even more almost literally one year ago to the day. Bottom line is, us Roberts boys like us some Lucky Dog Hot Sauces!

As a recap, the first three sauces Zalkind has released are colored as such: Green (Mild), Red (Medium) and Orange (Hot). Plus for clarification’s sake (more on the newer three in just a second), these aforementioned trio are all fire-roasted pepper sauces.

While it’s great that a lot of us gather together with family and friends and grill & barbecue (heck, shouldn’t that be what life is all about?), let us never forget the sacrifices made by those men and women to gave us this divine privilege of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In Austin, Texas, the IBM Watson Food Truck served up exotic dishes that explore computing’s culinary creativity, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) event. The recipes were created through a collaboration between IBM Watson and award-winning chefs at New York’s Institute of Culinary Education.

One such recipe was a BBQ sauce. Yes, that’s right, a recipe for a BBQ topper that was created solely by a computer program…