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The Joy of Hot Sauce
By Susan Burnell
On Valentine's Day, my husband Bob and I spent four hours in the kitchen
blending and bottling two dozen bottles of hot sauce. (We named this batch "Heart
Warming.") We give away bottles to friends, family and colleagues who appreciate
a dash of heat with their meals. It's a hobby we do together. This time, we mused
about some of the life lessons that can be found in the making of hot sauce.
1. Plan ahead, but be adaptable to change. We grow some of our own peppers
and cilantro, which takes advance planning and planting. We also buy from our
local farmers' market and grocery stores. We can't always count on a good yield or
the same types of peppers being in season. So, we adapt the recipe to
accommodate what's available.
By Susan Burnell
On Valentine's Day, my husband Bob and I spent four hours in the kitchen
blending and bottling two dozen bottles of hot sauce. (We named this batch "Heart
Warming.") We give away bottles to friends, family and colleagues who appreciate
a dash of heat with their meals. It's a hobby we do together. This time, we mused
about some of the life lessons that can be found in the making of hot sauce.
1. Plan ahead, but be adaptable to change. We grow some of our own peppers
and cilantro, which takes advance planning and planting. We also buy from our
local farmers' market and grocery stores. We can't always count on a good yield or
the same types of peppers being in season. So, we adapt the recipe to
accommodate what's available.
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2. Sharpen your tools. Sharp knives are important for fast slicing and dicing of the peppers, onions and garlic that go into our sauce.
We also tried out a new, more powerful blender we received as a Christmas gift. What it difference it made! The result was a far
smoother blend in a lot less time.
The lesson: Try out a new skill or sharpen an old one. You may wonder why you didn't do it sooner.
3. The process is as rewarding as the goal. There is a sense of accomplishment seeing those little bottles lined up in a row on the
kitchen counter. But we treasure those hours working side by side, too. A soothing blues channel plays in the background as we do
the ordinary chores of prepping, measuring, mixing, simmering and pouring. There's great anticipation and excitement after the first
blending step, when we sample a few dots of the sauce on a cracker.
Life isn't just about the major accomplishments. It's all the small steps celebrated along the way.
4. Don't settle for off-the-shelf. I had never been especially fond of store-bought hot sauces. Too much heat and not enough flavor. In
2005, I found a couple of recipes online and we began experimenting. That developed into a blend of hot and mild peppers and other
ingredients that add flavor to the heat.
We miss out on life's richness when we settle for someone else's idea of what we should have, without exploring other options.
5. Time is the secret ingredient. We invest a whole afternoon every time we make hot sauce. We don't get any financial benefits from
it. To us, the gift of time spent together is more valuable than anything we might buy and wrap in shiny paper. The people who get a
bottle of sauce from us may not know how much time went into it, but it does surprise them that we would find time to make it.
Share time with someone special. Don't count the minutes or the cost.
About the author: Susan Burnell, APR is an accredited public relations professional and business writer based in Houston, Texas. Her
work has appeared in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, American Legacy, North Florida Doctor and numerous other magazines.
Burnell's bylined special sections have earned writing awards from the International Association of Business Communicators and the
Florida Public Relations Association. For more information visit www.inkspark.net