Now for some really good hot sauce

 It is 96 degrees outside. A heat index of 103. And, yes I am thinking about something cool to drink with lots of ice. I love ice. Thank goodness that I live in an ice age. What I mean to say is I am glad to live in an age in which one may easily find ice to cool your drinks or to crunch upon. I am an ice cruncher, big-time.

I remember as a kid riding with my older brothers to the ice house to pick up a block of ice. I can’t really remember what it was for. It might have just been ice for consuming because I remember a lot of chopping ice with picks but don’t remember a lot of cubed or crushed ice except for maybe in a snow cone. It’s funny what one remembers and doesn’t remember.

As strange as it is, as hot as it is, I sit here thinking about hot sauce. I made two jars of hot sauce two weeks ago. I vowed to let it sit a month before I sampled it. How silly of me to think I could let anything sit while I wait in anticipation. I am an impatient man.

The degree of heat is, supposedly, at the heart of what separates the two jars of sauce. They both contain virtually identical contents: Jalapeno and habanero peppers, plus a few herbs, spices and a few pieces of carrot. One jar is larger and has one habanero the other jar is small with with two habaneros. The theory being the less jalapenos and more habaneros, the more heat.

This weekend I just had to try the sauce. At the end of week two, I am pleased to report that both sauces are divine. I can only imagine what they shall be in month or two, if I have any sauce left. The big jar is a milder, more flavorful specimen but the dos habaneros version, while spicy, also has a great taste. I tried both on some lima beans and they make life worth living.

So now that I have talking about hot sauce out of my system, it’s time to  search for something cold. First, I will have to crawl into that zillion-degree pickup truck burn my hands on the steering wheel as well as burn my butt and all its fixtures on the fabric seat.

Summertime in Texas. You just can’t beat it. But you can try.