Giveaway Winner! And Watermelon

Ugh, sorry it took me more than half the day to announce the giveaway winner.  Wordpress and my computer were in a fight, and I was stuck in the middle trying to make peace.  Can’t we all just get along??

Anyway, without further ado, the winner of a bottle of Benny T’s Vesta is Em!  Em wrote:
I’d love to try the very hot. I put hot peppers or hot sauce on EVERYTHING. It doesn’t taste right until it burns 🙂 

AMEN.  Congratulations to Em and thanks to everyone that entered!

In the meantime, I am super-jazzed about the watermelon I just bought.  My arm aches from carrying it around the store (it’s a whopper!) but it will be so worth it when I bite into that juicy summery goodness this evening.

I don’t have a pic of mine because it’s waiting for me in the car but here is what a watermelon looks like in case the horrid winter has eradicated all of your wonderful warm memories:

I love you.

What’s your favorite summertime fruit?

Spicy Spotlight and GIVEAWAY!: Benny T’s Vesta

Last month, H and I attended the second annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo, where we had the time of our lives sampling incredible, small batch crafted hot sauces in every flavor imaginable and meeting tons of great people.  We also purchased and brought home dozens of bottles of those sauces, and I immediately got to work coming up with fun uses and recipes for some of our acquisitions.

Since the Expo, I have been spotlighting some of these products and my uses for them on the blog.   No one is paying me for this; I am only sharing because I have truly fallen in love with each and every one of these sauces and the incredible depth of flavor that they have added to my food.

For this final week of the series, I present a very special Spicy Spotlight (complete with a giveaway!): Benny T’s Vesta!

Vesta is produced in Raleigh, NC and is best described as a “dry hot sauce.”  There are three levels available:  Hot, Very Hot, and Ghost.  I am the proud owner of Very Hot, which is, as you might surmise, very hot.

These hot sauces are no joke! I tried the Ghost at the Expo, and though I was able to appreciate its amazing flavor despite the pain, I am happy with my ultimate decision to buy the Very Hot  🙂

A month removed from the Expo, I can safely say that this is my favorite product from the event.  I have used it every single day, multiple times a day, since then (except for the 8 days of Passover because it contains breadcrumbs and Passover is terrible).  In addition to adding heat to food, Vesta imparts a unique rich, savory, sort of smoky flavor that I absolutely love.  A little goes a long way too, which I feel makes it an excellent value.

In my opinion, and speaking now from a month of experience, Vesta improves everything.  Seriously, everything.

You can put it on guacamole:
Or pizza:

Or curry:On a sandwich:Or on hummus (shown here with falafel bites from Whole Foods):Or sprinkle it on pasta, over roasted veggies, into soup…you get the idea.

H and I are both crazy about this stuff.  We bought one bottle at the Expo, and I immediately put it in my purse for easy access at all time.  But it soon became apparent that we needed another bottle because H quickly got tired of having to go rummaging through my purse every time he wanted some (which was frequently!).

I really can’t recommend this highly enough to anyone who likes their food to have a little heat and a whole lot of flavor.

GIVEAWAY
Because Vesta was my favorite thing from the Expo (which is saying a lot, as I tried [and loved!] many, many things), and because this is the last week of Spicy Spotlight, I would like to offer one of you a chance to possess a bottle of your very own!
NOTE TO GF READERS: The dry hot sauces are not gluten-free–sorry!

To enter: simply leave me a comment telling me which Vesta variety you would like to have, and what you are most looking forward to trying it on!  I will randomly select a winner by 11:59:59 pm EST on May 7, 2014.

Good luck!

Click here to read the first Spicy Spotlight, featuring NW Elixirs.
Click here to read the second  Spicy Spotlight, featuring Dragon’s Blood Elixirs.
Click here to read last week’s Spicy Spotlight, featuring Horseshoe Brand.