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Mar. 6th, 2007 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraThe Chili Pepper Emporium bills itself as the world's largest chili store. It's in a strip mall, right next door to a Starbucks, about half a mile from Albuquerque's Old Town (which you figure should be its natural comfort zone.) The plaque over its front door reads: Hey you with the $5 coffee – support us too!
(It couldn't have been talking to me – my vente coffee with room for cream only cost a buck eighty!)
I was on a stealth mission, of course; checking to see what The Chili Pepper Emporium had that Slow Burn didn't but might want. The answer: nada. Pretty low-end branding throughout – very cheap looking ceramics, rather hideous teeshirts (Go Ahead – Squeeze My Peppers rampant above two leering, tit-level cartoon chilies,) more-or-less the same variety of hot sauce but heavier on the This Is Fucking HOT-style labels and spread out over walls and walls of shelves. (My branding is more the upscale, Dia de los Muertos dollhouse effect.)
Very sweet guy behind the counter, which kind of broke my heart – I figured he was the owner. Nothing so sad as a brave little store in the off-season. (Ah, the capricious economy of touristo desire…)
I would have bought something for solidarity's sake except I blew my $20 running around money on the Coolest Sunglasses Evah! At the Fiery Foods Show.
Fiery Foods Show itself – not so much fun as previous years. The novelty has worn off. Or maybe my – heh, heh, heh – stressful lifestyle has finally caught up with me. Truthfully my idea of a vacation right now is to lie in bed for a week with the shades down, gobbling bonbons and watching HBO.
("That's not really your idea of a vacation, is it?" Lucius – to whom I confided this ambition – inquired anxiously.
"Oh, of course not, Lucius!" I said. "I'd watch Showtime too. As long as all that remote control action didn't overwork my thumb.")
A few cool things:
I like Albuquerque – it's so flat and brown and utilitarian, yet there are all these strange and magical things if you only know how to look for them. Albuquerque's Old Town has the squalor of true antiquity. In contrast , Santa Fe's Old Town is a kind of Disneyland built in the 1920's as a tourist trap (literally!) and modeled after a pueblo in southern Colorado.
I did a little sightseeing around the Show. On the upper floor of a tiny stucco shack, I found a shop called Santisima that specializes in shadow boxes, those portable saints' reliquaries. Spent a companionable half hour charting with the artist about his craft, dreaming of new inventory for the little Store – a line of retablos modeled after dead American movie stars! We could start with Anna Nicole Smith! A splinter of the true pelvis! A droplet of sperm from the unknown Baby-Daddy. From there we could move on to James Dean… And is it too soon to start stalking Clint Eastwood? I mean, he's gotta croak one of these days…
(It couldn't have been talking to me – my vente coffee with room for cream only cost a buck eighty!)
I was on a stealth mission, of course; checking to see what The Chili Pepper Emporium had that Slow Burn didn't but might want. The answer: nada. Pretty low-end branding throughout – very cheap looking ceramics, rather hideous teeshirts (Go Ahead – Squeeze My Peppers rampant above two leering, tit-level cartoon chilies,) more-or-less the same variety of hot sauce but heavier on the This Is Fucking HOT-style labels and spread out over walls and walls of shelves. (My branding is more the upscale, Dia de los Muertos dollhouse effect.)
Very sweet guy behind the counter, which kind of broke my heart – I figured he was the owner. Nothing so sad as a brave little store in the off-season. (Ah, the capricious economy of touristo desire…)
I would have bought something for solidarity's sake except I blew my $20 running around money on the Coolest Sunglasses Evah! At the Fiery Foods Show.
Fiery Foods Show itself – not so much fun as previous years. The novelty has worn off. Or maybe my – heh, heh, heh – stressful lifestyle has finally caught up with me. Truthfully my idea of a vacation right now is to lie in bed for a week with the shades down, gobbling bonbons and watching HBO.("That's not really your idea of a vacation, is it?" Lucius – to whom I confided this ambition – inquired anxiously.
"Oh, of course not, Lucius!" I said. "I'd watch Showtime too. As long as all that remote control action didn't overwork my thumb.")
A few cool things:
- Cajohn's has come up with the first Fatali pepper hot sauce. (Fatali's being that recently discovered chili specie that's actually hotter than habanero.) Great taste, and very, very hot.
- Second best hot sauce I tasted – after the Fatali – was a hot sauce made in China, packaged in the coolest bottle ever with a big rubber habanero stopper! Of course, it's impossible to get in the United States.
- The wacky Blair's Death Sauce crew is working on a ghoulish new brand extension – wrinkle cream! They've added capsaicin to Oil of Olay. Or something. Their sales guy stalked me for twenty minutes – "Let's face it, honey, we could all use a little help –" which put The Fear into me. I mean, right! I have wrinkles. I'm 55 years old. I've come by my wrinkles honestly. But what kind of wrinkles? Helen Mirren-type wrinkles? (In which case I'm still beautiful…) Or Exhibit From Ripley's Believe It or Not-type wrinkles? (In which case, I leave a wave of broken mirrors in my wake…) The whole pitch was very nerve-wracking: I have many faults but vanity has never been among them.
- Very nice chat with Tenspeed's _____ _____ who's got the greatest job in the world, trotting around from culinary capitol to culinary capitol, taking chefs out to lunch and pitching them cookbook ideas. He laid a copy of the Café Paschal's new cookbook on me, stunningly beautiful, a work of art, though I don't think I'd ever cook from it – a little too heavy on banana leaves and similar ingredient choices.
I like Albuquerque – it's so flat and brown and utilitarian, yet there are all these strange and magical things if you only know how to look for them. Albuquerque's Old Town has the squalor of true antiquity. In contrast , Santa Fe's Old Town is a kind of Disneyland built in the 1920's as a tourist trap (literally!) and modeled after a pueblo in southern Colorado.
I did a little sightseeing around the Show. On the upper floor of a tiny stucco shack, I found a shop called Santisima that specializes in shadow boxes, those portable saints' reliquaries. Spent a companionable half hour charting with the artist about his craft, dreaming of new inventory for the little Store – a line of retablos modeled after dead American movie stars! We could start with Anna Nicole Smith! A splinter of the true pelvis! A droplet of sperm from the unknown Baby-Daddy. From there we could move on to James Dean… And is it too soon to start stalking Clint Eastwood? I mean, he's gotta croak one of these days… 
