I’ll admit, when I was assembling my list of favorite seasons/seasonings, I kind of rushed the whole thing. Because I inadvertently left off one of my biggest go-to spices: crushed red pepper flakes.
My top four remains the same, but I’m bumping garlic powder down a notch. Sorry, guy. You had a good run. Here’s my revised list:
- Autumn
- Salt*
- Pepper
- Winter
- Crushed red pepper flakes
First, the asterisk. I’m actually very particular about my salt. When I lived in the PNW, I discovered Jacobsen Pure Flake Sea Salt. Forget your basic Morton’s iodized; this stuff is harvested from Netarts Bay on the Oregon Coast and features flakes that are bright and briny with a delicate crunch and perfect for finishing any dish. (I stole that from their website but it totally tracks.)
Best of all, a little bit goes a long way. One pinch is perfect for most dishes. Good thing: Jacobsen ain’t cheap ($15 for a 4-oz. bag), but to me, it’s worth it. Once in a blue moon I’ll stumble upon it in a local specialty store; otherwise, I order it from their website a couple of times a year.
I import my crushed red pepper flakes, too.
(God, am I bougie??)
I’d seen ads for Flatiron Pepper Company for years and was curious to see if it lived up to the hype. (The hype is all theirs, by the way. The first thing you see on their website, big and bold and weirdly all capitalized: You’ll Never Go Back To “Red” Pepper Flakes. I like their confidence. And the fact that they put “Red” in quotation marks for no apparent reason. Makes it feel like an inside joke that the rest of us aren’t privy to. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s an inside joke – the more insider, the better. I had to try them after seeing that!)
So, I placed an order. They were throwing in a custom grinder that screws onto the top of the bottle with the purchase of two or more spices, so I figured, what the hey.
It’s a pretty slick contraption. And the chile pepper flakes? Yep: Flatiron’s braggadocio is well-deserved. They’re more flavorful than any other brand I’ve tried. Plus, you can choose from a variety of pepper blends with different spice levels – everything from Sweet Heat and Smoke Show to I Can’t Feel My Face. I do prefer to feel my face, so I stick with the basic Four Pepper Blend (árbol, ghost, habanero, jalapeño). It sounds hotter than it is, but the stuff still packs a punch, so again, a little goes a long way. A bottle ($8.95) lasts me a long time.
A lot of people like red pepper flakes on pizza, and yeah, that’s a given. I also add it to pasta, baked sweet potatoes, avocado toast, veggies, potato salad, cottage cheese, and probably half a dozen other foods I can’t think of at the moment. Usually, Tara rolls her eyes whenever I “deface” a “perfectly good dish” she has made – yeah, the quotes are hers – but some things just demand a little kick.
Flatiron’s Hatch Green Chile is great, too. Much milder than the Four Pepper Blend. I love hatch green chiles, but that’s a separate blog post.
Turning Japanese
Tara has been under the weather this past week (and by under the weather, I mean, suffering from the mother of all colds), so the weekend has kind of been a wash for her. Saturday, while she was bundled up in a blanket on the couch watching movies, I headed to Jefferson to check out their first-ever Kikkoman Cookoff. When a giant soy sauce manufacturing plant is going up in your town, you celebrate with a Japanese-themed party.
Kikkoman has weird ties to Wisconsin. They only have three U.S. plants, and two of them are here in America’s Dairyland (the third’s in California). I thought it was weird they chose Wisco, so I googled that shit. And learned they picked us for our central location, access to soybeans and wheat, a good water source, and a hardworking workforce. Which I totally get as those are the exact same four reasons Tara and I chose Wisconsin, too. Weird.
I really liked the Kikkoman Cookoff. There was entertainment (Beni Daiko Drumming) and generous free food samples; the chicken and shrimp skewer over glass noodles topped with chili ponzu was especially good. I bought a chicken teriyaki bowl from a food truck and wandered all around Rotary Park on the Rock River, even though it was roughly a bajillion degrees. Jefferson is a pretty charming town.
I came home, did some weeding in the garden for a couple of hours, then joined Tara in the living room for Rocky. That movie will always be inspirational to me; it gave me the will to fight after a particularly trying time in my life…and besides, who doesn’t love an underdog?
Other than Simon Bar Sinister.
Is there a spice or seasoning you’ll splurge on? If you like red pepper flakes, what do you put them on? Been to any fun summer events yet?
Mark My Words 
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