As regular readers of this column (or its archives) will
know, TSAAF is greatly inspired by Scott Robert’s website (if you’re a
chilehead, you should already know it, but if not, it’s http://www.scottrobertsweb.com/) and
he has undergone another site renovation, as he is periodically prone to do, in
an effort to both improve and keep things fresh. If you haven’t been there in a
while, go check it out. I think it’s his best one yet.
Obviously, the TSAAF has done little to none of this sort of
thing since in the inception, it being the sort of thing that one has to make
time to do so, as finding that time is out of the question. Scott works, I believe, in
the field and is well immersed in the technology, which lends itself nicely to
that task whereas I have no such interest, experience or facility to change
things up greatly. The blog itself is not so far off from what I had in mind, as it is,
aside from whatever change comes to pass (spoiler: probably adding a picture of
the actual sauce bottle to the reviews - if anyone has any suggestions, I’m
still wide open to those…) when it finally hits 100 sauce reviews.
That number is fast approaching. As of this writing, it now
stands at 97 (out of 129, including this, posts total), so doing the quick
math, 3 more reviews in 3 months isn’t out of the question…I won’t, however,
say it will be easy. Simple to type, sure, but not easy, given a shift in my
job a couple months ago that has me traveling far more than at any other time
in my professional career. Unlike Scott, I don’t now, never have and never will
carry hot sauce with me into restaurants, so it will have to be when I’m
home…I’ve also resumed an earlier diet shift from the spring that I temporarily
dropped. Real talk here for a minute, the number one thing we put hot sauce on
is meat and/or pizza. I haven’t had pizza at home in many months and can’t
remember the last time there was a frozen one here at all. As to meat, my wife
has elected to try on the vegetarian/vegan hat on again. Since I eat out every day, if not more often,
I try to make things easier by greatly tapering my meat intake at home. My
son isn’t really a mega meat eater, either, so that just means there is less of
it around in general. That then means a lesser opportunity for sauce, so there
can frequently be a considerable lull in finding a use for hot sauce. On the
plus side, open bottles are at a pretty low point, which means lots of room for
new ones as the opportunities come up.
Less positively, I still don’t have any real contenders for
Sauce Of The Year, with now 9 months gone. I’m not in full-on panic mode just
yet, but I may wind up opening it up to previous years and get more bottles of
previous contenders, both to see how they have held up and also to hold a
“showdown” of sorts, possibly, where instead of trying to fit them in to
whatever I happen to be doing, I make it a point to thoroughly test all of
them. If it comes down to that, I will furnish a blow by blow breakdown of that
testing.
Wine blog is also churning along. I think that one is up to
32 different wines reviewed. I anticipate that one getting to around 40 or so
by the end of the year.
In the arena of Yelp, my anniversary date of signing up is
September 13th and in the 2 years and 2 weeks-ish I’ve been on, I’ve
hit 880+ reviews. I’m not going to breakdown the full stats until the end of
the year, but I do an odd thing and typically write a fast review of a place if
I haven’t reviewed it yet, but don’t always post it. Sometimes I will jot notes
for a placeholder setting, sometimes it will be an actual change to an existing
review or rating, but I frequently let a lot of those sit and sometimes gel for
a bit. Where I’m going with this is that at any given time, I’ve got probably a
couple dozen of those things waiting…I also have now 6 separate lists of places
I want to get to, so that train will keep on rolling for some time to come…feel
free to add me by following the widget and clicking through if you’re also on
there and care to do that.
Next General Update will be the End Of The Year one, unless
I hit 100 before that, in which case, that may get its own special post…stay
tuned.
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