TSAAF At 100

After the last posting, this blog has finally reached 100 sauces reviewed. Well, full reviews, that is. If I count the Mini-Reviews I did in the beginning, but no longer do, it’s more like 118. It has taken [3 years, 1 month, 19 days – oddly enough, I launched it on a 09/11] to hit that, owing to a few things. Those things include dietary changes, job changes (while this was a highly rewarding move, in this one respect, it delayed reaching this total considerably, though obviously that’s minor comparatively), repeats of sauces (though this is kind of the point, except for one forgettable one that I predictably forgot…and then wasted money on again and another that got a second chance and improved its rating somewhat) and even lifestyle changes. I try to finish all of the sauces generally, which tends to delay things still more, given those other circumstances, a number of which I’ve written about in various updates. I also don’t include other stuff in there; no snacks, no wing sauces, no barbeque sauces, no dry blends, no fast food or restaurant offerings, just straight hot sauce. 

After that much time, even though in the grand scheme of things, this is relatively meaningless, this still feels like somewhat of a big deal to me. I fully realize a lot of sites feature quite a number more reviews than this. One of the things I’m proudest of is that there are a lot of sauces here in this blog that are reviewed nowhere else. As much as spicy food is making its way into the mainstream, hot sauces on the fringe are not. It’s still mostly mass market stuff, which is kind of a pity. Still, I’m happy to at least provide what amounts to singular and unique reviews. This will compromise the next part a bit, in a way, but I think it’s a worthy change and serves more as enhancement.

The next part is, of course, the change to this blog upon hitting 100. That particular change will be adding photos of the bottles, particularly the front label (which started with the 100^th post), something I’ve been obviously telegraphing for a while now. This will have to be a work in progress, though and some of these will not wind up with pictures as several sauces are now gone the way of the dinosaur, never to be heard from again. Quite a few of them are still out there, but I’m not buying more bottles. I love y’all, but I’m not picking up bottles of bullshit for the sake of a picture. Maybe if I run into it in a store, but definitely not paying for inferior product or trying to slog through it just for the sake of the TSAAF, mighty and fun as it is…anyway, keep checking back for your favorites in the meantime, but I will make a separate post once the backlog is caught up or it will show up in one of the General Updates. As of this writing, 18 entries are done (basically everything open and in the fridge and what I could find in the store during this week’s grocery shopping), which includes 2 of the current 3 past “Sauce Of The Years” and the all-time most popular individual sauce on the TSAAF, the Valentina Xtra Hot. I have 62 left to do, as of now, but that list might be cut down radically, if I have a difficult time finding some of the sauces on the shelves.

I’ve also finished some general housekeeping. I’ve done a fair amount of cycling the open sauces this year and in addition to that, I’ve gone back through the history of the blog, both to fix a bunch of broken links when I changed the URL to the blog itself earlier this year as well as removing a number of posts, mostly commenting about the various results of a tournament Scott Roberts was running once upon a time (over a couple years ago now) on his website to anoint a crown prince of sauces that wound up basically being abandoned after it became clear that the results were too easily skewed by marketing forces and not necessarily a solid representation of what he was trying to achieve. It was a noble idea, to be sure, but the reality didn’t quite live up to the lofty premise.

A number of those sauces are long gone now and the contest never did get finally decided, so keeping those up was pointless, despite the various meanderings I put in there, as I’m wont to do, regarding various other items, such as snacks or whatever else I’d tried that some company or another had tried to market as spicy and my various thoughts. A lot of that is outside of what I really wanted the blog to do and while I like the General Updates as historical markers, I probably have enough of those as it is.

Even at something as relatively low as 100 sauces, unless you intend on going to the shows or ordering more or less online frequently, it becomes fairly difficult finding that many sauces without repeats, particularly when you have strong aversions to a fairly common ingredient, such as onions, as I do. Add to that my revulsion to extract and it’s not really too much of a wonder it took this long to get here…but it’s here now.

As always, if there’s any other changes you’d like to see, shoot me a line. Thanks for dropping by.