Catch-up and Hot Sauce

 

A lot has happened since I last left words here!

My mother came to visit, I upped my WRPD (words read per day) count, and I had a short-lived, tragic love affair with a woman named Melinda. To be fair, she wasn't as hot as she claimed to be.

Following the two week cold snap (-30 degrees is enough to keep me inside most of the time, yet I still didn't blog), we got a 70 degree turn around with a week of 40 degrees and rain! Snowboarding be damned and solid ice sidewalks be praised, it became official winter biking weather! The mile long bike path from my house to my work was, and I don't exaggerate at all here, a curving up and down, back and forth, ice slalom of death for anyone without ice cleats.

Or studded tires. :)

One week gone and the rain turned to snow again. After three inches piled up, tire traction was gone and snowboards came back into style. I turned pages again and finished my Patagonia Trilogy Series and moved on to my first experience with Chuck Palahniuk with Rant. Before Rant, I spent a week hanging out with my mom. Call me a momma's boy all you want but my mom is great fun to be around! As this was her second visit to Girdwood, no tours were needed so engaging in winter sports, going to local concerts, and drinking lots of wine went uninhibited.

On the day my mother arrived, I also have a chance meeting with Melinda.

If you're a fan of sauces that make you simultaneously smile, cry, and slow down your food intake, check out El Yucateco's XXXtra Hot Chile Habanero. This stuff is great. I fell in love after one bite of one burrito.

The only problem is that she doesn't live in Girdwood, and she only hangs out at select stores in Anchorage. So when we don't drive into downtown Anchorage to buy Kombucha tea for my sisters, I search Fred Meyer's hot sauce sections (pluralized because their hot sauces are spread out across the store into three different sections. Asian foods, Hispanic foods, and canned tomatoes/steak dressings sections. How they decided to put Tapatio one place and Chalula another is anyone's guess) for an alternative. Unless there is a mysterious fourth section for hot sauces (industrial cleaning products?), Melinda was the hottest thing they had to offer. Sporting an extra 'X' and claiming to be a 'Reserve' item, I bought two bottles.

Oh, what a letdown. If you like sauces hotter than Tabasco, buy Melinda's hot sauce, but don't expect her to bring you to your knees. For off-the-shelf oral masochism, she is a weak player. El Yucateco, how I long for thee. Yet I still have nearly two bottles-worth of Melinda so I may as well buy some eggs and take the hit. I really didn't expect this blog to be a hot sauce revue but of all you readers out there (I'm reading three at the moment, tripling my count from the last blog!), I'm sure someone will take this into consideration next time they're making burritos.

On a sweeter note, Emily (my sister), has taken to coconuts over the past few months and, through trial and error, we've now learned an easy method for extracting the milk and flesh! A wine corkscrew and a hammer! Corkscrew into that sucker and let the milk drain out into a jar, then put a hole in the other side and hammer the shell for a fairly clean half and half split! Use a butter knife to pop out the flesh.

In other news, Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula residents have spent the last week on volcano watch. If you haven't seen it in the news yet, Mount Redoubt is bubbling, shaking, and is more than likely going to erupt 106 miles from Anchorage. Wind conditions may or may not drop a layer of ash on the more populated city in Alaska, so everyone is waiting with some form of anticipation.

Ah, and one week from today my oldest sister, Sarah, and my brother-in-law, Danny, will be here for ten days! We'll see if Mount Redoubt keeps them here longer... :)