BRING ON THE HEAT

 As I have noted many times on this blog I was born and raised in northwestern North Dakota, about 50 miles south of Saskatchewan and around 90 miles east of Montana.

My father was a typical duke's mixture of someone whose family line went back in this country a few hundred years: English, Scotch, Irish, whatever.

My mother, however, was pure Norwegian.

Her grandparents both came over from Norway.

Since she did most of the cooking, our food tended to be rather bland.

Oh, it was good and we all loved her baking of breads, cookies, pies and cakes.

But our diet tended to be on the mild side.

And that was my taste for many years.

When I reached adulthood my idea of a great meal was a steak fried to medium well done, never any of that red showing, and a huge baked potato.

But since then I've lived over half of my life in Arizona, where Tex-Mex food predominates.

Excuse me, it's not true Mexican food, no matter what the hundreds of cafes advertise.

And I lived nearly five years in Mexico itself, where I found out the difference.

My wife makes a mean meat loaf but over the years she has expanded her expertise to master Oriental food and stir-fry meals.

And over the years my tongue has changed somewhat.

But now in our later years she's grown tired of cooking and, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, she says her palate can no longer handle spicy food.

So if I want something "sparked up" a bit I have to do it myself.

Which led me to purchase a bottle of what passes itself off as Indonesian hot sauce.

I use it on scrambled eggs, only a teaspoon or so and with a glass of ice water close at hand.

The ingredients are listed as red jalapeno and habanero peppers, garlic, cane sugar and a few other things.

When Judy's son was out here a year ago he asked for some hot sauce on something we had served him and he tried this sauce.

He said it was sweet and later I could see what he meant.

I suppose the cane sugar gave the heat a sweet edge.

I should point out that he does most of his own cooking and he likes his food spicy HOT.

So there's your cooking tip for the day: Sambal hot sauce.

And remember the slogan printed on the bottle's label: "Pain is Good!"