We are so lucky to have foodie friends that not only make for wonderful evenings filled with tables of food that would rival that of any restaurant but also sometimes drop off little care packages on our doorstep. So was the case a week ago. We were just leaving to walk to a neighborhood street fair (the food trucks were there and we had been strategizing on how we could possibly taste everything we wanted to) when our friend Alex came rolling up on his cruiser bike with a gift bag dangling off his handle bar. Inside was a sampling of the fruits of his garden – fresh pressed tomato juice and homemade hot sauce.
I recalled seeing an article in a recent Bon Appetit about making your own hot sauce and Alex said this indeed is where he got the inspiration, using a variety of peppers. It took all the restraint we had not to run right in the house and make a Bloody Mary. Instead we prolonged the anticipation so we could savor these ingredients the way they should be – over a leisurely Sunday morning. And we agreed that it was the most fresh tasting Bloody Mary we’d ever had. The hot sauce packs a heat that builds slowly on the back of the palette but is clean and bright. The tomato juice couldn’t have been much fresher. A reminder of how bloody lucky we are to live where we do and have the friends that we have. Cheers to that!
