My cowboy daddy, the late Lawrence Ray (L. Ray) Webb, saw to it that spicy seasoning was a staple around the household when he and Mom were raising four sons. 

Dad spent a lot of his early childhood in Brady and spicy food – a definite Mexican influence via a significant Hispanic population – was plentiful. So, naturally he craved as much of the taste as possible. Mom, being the typical housewife and mother of the times, sought to satisfy that taste as much as possible. 

While her central Texas farm-raising gave her recipes and talents for creating in the kitchen, she was also good at old-fashioned canning. One area of canning involved relishes that were used to season everything, particularly the typically somewhat bland pinto bean and black-eyed peas dishes. 

“Chow-chow,” one traditional relish used by farming families was an onion-based but sweet in flavor in that sweeter onions were used and augmented by sweet pickles and peppers. The latter were usually of a mild variety and might also be slightly sweet, which made for a pleasant mixture. She also made “pepper sauce,” by canning hot green peppers that produced and were held in a liquid that was definitely spicy and used on any array of vegetables from turnip greens to spinach to pinto beans to field peas.

However, Dad’s desires for something “hotter” and spicier made Mother hunt for a fiery concoction simply called pepper relish. It contained hotter peppers and onions and accompanying liquid mixtures that had a definite zing to them. The chopped relish was quite good with beans and peas, and the liquid pepper sauce livened the leafy veggies. 

But, there was another seasoning Dad expected to be on the table at all times “just in case nothing else spiced up the turnip greens, beans or peas: Tabasco sauce.” That red peppery liquid was applied to meats as well as to pinto beans especially and occasionally to the black-eyed shelled peas. 

I didn’t know there was another Tabasco sauce other than the red one until a couple of summers ago when we celebrated Life Mate’s birthday with a requested trip to Acadiana – New Iberia and surrounding territory where we found the original Tabasco facility on Avery Island. Naturally, the sauce manufacturing facility had a ready supply of peppers, being grown both by the company and other farmers, in close proximity.

The company store had all manner of Tabasco products, since the trademark sauce has created a cult in and of itself. In addition to a wide variety of sauces and seasonings, there are of course t-shirts, caps, aprons, hot pads, dishes and coffee cups with the Tabasco label. Obviously, I had to have a cap that hangs on the rack in my Man Cave and is worn alternately with other head coverings. 

We managed to select a small number of Tabasco flavors – Now Original, Chipotle, Buffalo Style and Sweet & Spicy Tabasco sauces grace our table. But, my personal favorite, and one with which I douse meats and vegetables is Raspberry Chipotle. It has just the right combination of sweet and hot, although Dad might have preferred the Habanero, Green Pepper or Garlic. After all variety is the spice of life. 

Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor and publisher of more than 50 years experience. 

wwebb1937@att.net