Peace, Love and Peppers
Products from Cin Chili and Company, founded by Stafford resident Cindy Reed Wilkins, two-time World Chili Cook-off Champion. She’ll be one of the vendors featured at the 9th Annual Hot Sauce Festival.
By Kim Hogstrom
Updated: 09.14.09
As this scorching summer draws to a close, it’s time again for one of the most amusing festivals of the year – Houston’s Hot Sauce Festival.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, this year’s event is called “Peace, Love and Peppers” and promises all in attendance a devil of a good time.
About 10,000 Houstonians are expected to visit the ninth annual zestfest to sample all types of fiery fare – sauces, chili, dips, marinades, rubs, pickled stuff, condiments and soup — even spicy jams and jellies, and chili-themed clothing and jewelry is available. With more than 60 vendors exhibiting, newcomers to the world of peppers and veteran chiliheads alike will find something to get fired up about.
“Peace, Love and Peppers” will run Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19 and 20 at the Stafford Center on Cash Road in Stafford. The entrance fee is $5, parking is free and there will be ongoing live entertainment throughout. One of the very coolest things about this festival is that the proceeds go the cancer research, and all the organizers are volunteer.
Concerned about bringing the kids? No sweat. This event is definitely family friendly, with lots of activities, food and beverages for children. In fact, there’s an official “chili-dren’s” area to delight chiliheads-in-training.
A courageous number of adult attendees will climb the “ladder of pain” offered by sauces of increasing degrees of heat at the CaJohn’s Fiery Foods booth. Others may sample Big Daddy’s Ass Burn, (“Hell goin’ in — Hell goin’ out,” exclaims the label) or Capitan Thom’s Dia De Los Muertes. And we mustn’t forget “Liquid Stoopid.” Need we say more?
A crowd favorite is “Big Daddy’s Flaming Lips.” “Lips” offers hints of citrus, pineapple, garlic and ginger mingled with Habanero peppers. This particularly pungent sauce is touted for its use on seafood and should be everyone’s sample list.
Part of the entertainment includes a heated competition among the exhibitors for 15 different awards. Competitors come from all over Texas as well as California, Ohio and Maryland to show off. Categories include, Best Booth, Best Spices and the People’s Choice Award, but the most coveted of prizes is the “Hottest Hot Sauce at the Festival” trophy.
“It’s so funny to watch the folks sampling and judging the hottest award,” said Carol Borge, Founder and Chief Promoter of the festival. “People really enjoy it. Bubbas like to walk up to the booths and say ‘OK, burn me up.’”
It’s for these daredevils that teams of paramedics remain on site throughout the festival in the event of flavor overload.
“It does happen,” Borge explained. “When it’s hot outside, people can get dehydrated and then they eat hot sauce and, well, sometimes they hit the dirt ... just pass out cold.”
For those with more timid taste buds, there are many milder dining delights to be sampled; not all are identified as “lethal ingestion.”
“While there are a lot of sauces at the festival that will melt your face off,” said Big Daddy Trevi, founder of Houston-based Big Daddy’s Hot Sauces. “We try to offer a savory combination of flavor and heat. That really works for us.”
Likewise for Cindy Reed Wilkins of the Stafford-based Cin Chili & Company. Wilkins is the world’s only two-time World Chili Cook-Off champion and she will be offering samples of her products this year including her prepackage chili.
“We try to stick to flavorful versus hot,” Wilkins said. “We want to offer food that can be enjoyed by everyone, everyday.”
As responsible journalists we must remind our readers that when sampling some of these hot sauces, you are playing with fire. Hot peppers contain an element called capsaicin, an alkaloid compound that has no taste, no flavor and is insoluble; it cannot be washed away by water (note: or beer).
Capsaicin produces the sensation of heat and some have argued that its ingestion is addictive. Science has produced evidence to suggest that peppers actually induce the production of endorphins in our brains resulting in temporary euphoria in the chilihead.
Other verified physiological responses include increased heart rate, metabolism, salivation, sweating and a runny nose.
Should you need relief from the heat, experts suggest consuming milk, ice cream, peanut butter, even table salt may help. After that, you’ll just have to outlive it.
What is there about Texans that provokes them to revere the hot pepper, to dine routinely on fare the would cause say, Canadians, to step away slowly? What makes us rush in where others fear to tread?
“We are not really sure,” said Carol Borge,” but we certainly do. Maybe it’s something in our history. Maybe it’s out weather, and maybe it’s just because there is nothing bland about Texas,” she said with a laugh.
For more information on the Houston Hot Sauce Festival go to www.houstonhotsauce.com.
