McIlhenny Roundup

From time to time, the sheer quantity of Tabasco-related items demands to be unleashed: 

The cinetrix sent along the following good news about Tabasco shelf life. The gallon, pictured below, would make a real statement as a wedding gift, dontcha think?

Elsewhere: Fitted Sweats roots for different professional sports franchises than I do. Unfortunate, because I would enjoy toasting the success of the franchises I root for with him. Nevertheless, his  Lisa Whelchel/hot saucing reset I followed further than I might have, for reasons unclear to me. Lisa Whelchel played Blair on The Facts of Life; "hot saucing" is a fundy child rearing technique where you put hot sauce on the tongue of your child if he sasses you, or espouses a belief in the empirical epistemes popularized in the Enlightenment or something. In any case, I followed the hot saucing story in the link, and found the following:

What do sauce manufacturers say [about 'hot saucing']?

McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, LA manufacture

Tabasco. The owners of the company condemn the use of the product for child discipline. President Paul McIlhenny called hot saucing “strange and scary and “abusive.”

Glenn Garner, marketing manager for the producer of Texas Pete hot sauce also rejected the use of hot sauce as a discipline method. “Obviously that’s not something that we condone or believe in at all…as a child I ate [hot sauce] because I enjoyed it, not because it was forced on me.

Big props to Paul McIlhenny for saying this is bad, rather than running away like a normal corporate bitch. The Texas Pete's guy, too. I owe both of you a drink. Way to resist the temptation of the "100s of uses" tag: Havana Nate's hot sauce makes your shrimp sparkle, and your children tractable!

Elsewhere, propers to the Tabasco folks for their efforts to preserve estuaries and whatnot on the Louisiana coast. Read all about it here. Ironic, considering the McIlheny family's legendary role in bringing the nutria to Louisiana. The nutria is a big old South American rodent that was introduced in Louisiana and promptly started having babies, and eating the bayou.  The relevant Google search suggests a variety of options on the specific role of the McIlhennys, (see esp Tabasco myths), but in any case, the nutria is nothing nice. However, unless your friends are much more mature than the Cod's I cannot encourage the purchase of a Save America's Wetlands bracelet.

Comments

[sac]

Fishbone. Haven't heard that in years.

[BK]

There was a movement underway a while back to encourage nutria consumption in the hopes of reducing population (nutrias, not Cajuns). Calvin Trillin documented for the Atlantic Monthly (doesn't seem to be available in their online archives). In any case, Paul Prudhomme (so unfortunate to be so easily confused with Dom Deluise) and others were called on to offer up dishes. Looks like some recipes live on: http://www.nutria.com/site14.php
"Heart healthy" to boot; who knew.

[max]

Speaking of sports, there's a fantastic joke in here somewhere, but I don't have the energy.

[punisher]

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry does not comment directly on the matter of disciplinary hot saucing. They do, however, note that:

-Whenever possible, consequences should be delivered immediately, should relate to the rule broken, and be short enough in duration that you can move on again to emphasize the positives.

and

-Consequences should be fair and appropriate to the situation and the child's age.

From this perspective, the dispensation of hot sauce for disciplinary purposes could be recommended only to the extent that it is believed to relate to the rule broken.

As a teensy taste of the fiery punishments that are the eternal reward for lil' ones who get sassy, one could argue that it's always appropriate.