My ex-father in law used to buy me bottles of hot sauce from places he visited. They got hotter and hotter over the years until I finally had to ask him to stop when he brought me a bottle with a little skull hanging from it. I think he may have been trying to deliver a message...
@Finnegan2017 lol - hope at least before that point you got some great flavored hot sauces to try!
@Concordiaesque Absolutely!!! There were some great ones, but it got to be too much. "Ass in a Bucket" and "Death Sauce" were the last straws, LOL
LMAO @ ass in a bucket!!
@Concordiaesque I have to write that down! thanks ! I don't eat spicy foods very often, so I can stretch for a time. I had two bottles of Sriracha during the whole supply shortage and never was in need. lol
@Finnegan2017 ex father in law is so fitting! lol
@cylee1180 Thanks for the suggestion! I poured some sambal on my rice dish, and I have to say it was delish!
@Concordiaesque You're in flavor country now! lol It has the right balance of heat and flavor imo. I've met a few pple from Singapore and SE Asia that view sambal as their favorite hot sauce.
Oh gosh, back in Vegas my favorite salsa ever was called Death Salsa. It was made locally and sold at Whole Foods and was sooooo scrumptious. I actually didn't find it that spicy, but it was just delicious beyond all get-out. Sadly, the family who made it moved on to other endeavors. I was crushed.
~ Sunset Snuggles
Ugh, heartbreaking @SunsetSnuggles. Similarly, the third hot sauce in my lineup (Chef Luciano's Gourmet Hot Sauce) was my #1 alltime favorite, so flavorful, stealing your words - delicious beyond all get-out. It was locally made and sold out of his restaurant, which sadly closed down during the pandemic. I tried reaching out several times to see if there was any way I could still obtain a few bottles, but never received a response. I was definitely crushed, and have yet to find a hot sauce that comes close in flavor profile and complexity.
Elijah Xtreme makes a variety of hot sauces(not just the insanely hot one I posted the other day)
The company was started by a father and his son.
https://elijahsxtreme.com
I love hot sauce, and all things spicy
unfortunatly after my recent stomach surgery I can't handle hot as well as I used to, had some of Wendy's ghost pepper fries the other day and they were good but they were hurting my stomach
@Lithellyl oh no, sorry to hear that!
@Concordiaesque
thanks, it's been a long slow road but I'm almost healed now
long story short (too late) here's what happened
for about a decade now I've been having horrible acid reflux, everyone says mine is the worst they've ever seen, including my doctors. I'm on both Prilosec AND Pepsid twice a day
also for a couple of years I've been having heart problems, specifically pedicardial infection. a viral infection that causes my heart to become swollen and enlarged
well, since January both problems have been steadily getting worse, and so I asked my doctor about them, and she sends me to a cardiologist and a gastroenterologist, I am put on a buttload of new meds, and sent in for a colonoscopy and an endoscopy (at the same time, they didn't even buy me dinner first)
in the meantime I'm also given EKGs and a sonogram to see how much damage my heart has, and thankfully it's minimal
the results of the endoscopy come back and the gastroenterologist says he thinks I may have a hiatal hernia, but he can't tell the extent of how bad it is so he wants to send me in for a cat scan
the cat scan confirms that I have a SEVERE hiatal hernia and so surgery is needed
meanwhile my health starts RAPIDLY going down hill, I am in near constant pain, I have trouble breathing and I am only able to eat one teaspoon of food a day before it hurts too much. I am desperately looking forward to this surgery and begging for the day of it to get closer.
finally the day of the surgery and the surgeon is one of the top rated gastroenterology surgeons in the nation, and he's done thousands of these hiatal hernia surgeries so I'm in good hands, he reassures me that this is a routine procedure, and it should take an hour and a half tops.
so I'm wheeled into the OR and I'm put to sleep
when I wake up, the doctors and nurses are crowded around me with this look of worry and concern on all their faces, and I notice I am in EXCRUCIATING pain!, the doctor says the surgery was a success but there was a bit of a complication.
as I'm wheeled into the recovery room, my mother tells me I was on the table for 5 and a half hours!!!!
that's when the surgeon comes in and says "I have done thousands of these surgeries and I have NEVER in my career seen anything like what you had!"
turns out what had happened is it wasn't JUST a hiatal hernia, but my ENTIRE STOMACH had torn itself loose from my abdomen, pushed it's way through my diaphragm, ripping a giant hole in it, and lodged itself into my chest, compressing my heart and collapsing my lungs.
the surgeon didn't come right out and say it, but the message was clear, if I had not had that surgery when I did, I'd have died.
he was able to pull the stomach back down to where it belongs, and stitch up my diaphragm, and then he sutured the stomach to my abdominal wall so that it doesn't migrate again. however I wasn't out of the woods, because I was given a window of four months to heal, and in the meantime, I was on a clear liquid diet, and warned that whatever I do I absolutely can NOT get nauseous and throw up because if I did, I would rupture my stomach, bleed out and die.
so about 3 weeks ago I have finally gotten back to a normal diet and mostly normal activity, I still get easily exhausted, and when I do, I will sleep for about 18 hours. and I'm still working on building my lung capacity back to where it should be (I only have like 1/3 the capacity of a normal person)
omgs I do the SAME thing - long story short (too late!)
LOL @ they didn't even buy me dinner first!
Wow...what a journey you've had...that's amazing - thank you so much for sharing @Lithellyl.
Definitely makes you appreciate the little things more, doesn't it?
@Lithellyl Holy freaking crap...so glad you made it through that!! gentlest of hugs
🦄 Enthusiast 🏞 Travel Fiend 🐘 Animal Lover
No problem at all you are so sweet and most definitely welcome 🤗 thanks for making this hot sauce thread 🪡 it’s hot 🥵🤭😂 !!!!
@Concordiaesque impressive!
For the last several years my go to hot sauces have been Cholula ( @CharlesInWI ) and Valentina hot sauce, but TikTok brought me to Elijah's Xtreme hot sauces. I bought all of them to try out, including their non-spicy bbq sauces. I fell in love with their Reaper sauce (350k SHU) that has such a great blend of flavors before a really nice heat comes in for the burn.
The next higher heat they have is 800k SHU with the Xtreme Regret, which for me skipped the flavor and went straight to the heat and because of that I have but haven't yet tried the 1 million SKU of what @Mike403 showed which is the Xtreme Regret Reserve. I'll get there though!
My only complaint is while the company does gallon jugs of some of their other hot sauces, they don't and can't do it with the Reaper because something to do with state laws around the liquor they add to the recipe and they are a small father/son run business so they can't just move their production to another state.
I do highly recommend them to anyone who likes spicy but wants flavor in their hot sauce too and glad to see others here know of and enjoy them too!
@Concordiaesque yeah it definitely does
@SunsetSnuggles thank you so much