Texas Outlaw Newsletter: It's Father's Day And Now We're Out of Sriracha Edition
Forget gas prices, wheat futures, electricity brownouts... we're running out of Sriracha! Well Happy. Damn. Father's. Day.
That's right, the precious hot sauce, equal only to Tabasco (Ok, and maybe Frank’s RedHot® Original Pepper Sauce) is in short supply. Clear some shelf space, Mama. There's hoarding to be done! The specific red peppers used in Sriracha are almost non-existent this year because of "severe weather conditions affecting the quality of chili peppers." This, according to Huy Fong Foods, the maker of the famous Asian pepper condiment. Climate change is apparently to blame, although climate change isn't real, so it can't be blamed. It wasn't all that long ago that (then) Texas Governor Rick Perry flew to California to convince Huy Fong to move to the great state of Texas. Huy Fong was being sued by a couple of folks in the Irwindale, California neighborhood who lived and worked next to the famous "Rooster Sauce" factory. Pretty good stuff, unless you have to share the air with a few vent stacks on top of industrial-sized kettles boiling a few tons of jalapeno peppers. "Welcome to Irvingdale: Come for the Sunshine, Stay for the Teargas."
In his pitch back in 2014, Gov. Good Hair explained, "In Texas...we know a thing or two about hot food and even hotter business climates." Sadly, Gov Good Hair didn't know much about our atmospheric climate... To be (reluctantly) fair, the Srirachi Delegation was a bipartisan one, with a couple of Dems in the mix... eager to promote Texas pepper growers and the potential for them to supply 100,000,000 lbs of the hybrid red-jalapeno annually. Sadly, Huy Fong counts on a single California supplier for his pepper fix. And the delegation's visit and the threat of him moving his factory seemed to motivate the local regulators to get off of his back. If this week (and what looks to be the entire summer) is any indication, it's probably not a great time to count on Texas for crop yield. From the Texas Tribune...
...moving or expanding into Texas wouldn't be easy, though. [company founder] David Tran works with a single pepper grower, Underwood Farms, and expects to get 58,000 tons of fresh chile peppers this season. In 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Texas produced only 8,000 tons of chile peppers.
Crop yields in California and New Mexico are also much higher than they are in Texas — Underwood Farms can grow more than 10 times as many chiles on the same amount of land as Texas growers did in 2011. And most of the chile peppers grown in Texas are green; Huy Fong exclusively uses red chile peppers.
But they're drying up in Cali, too. Let's get to Costco and see if they have a few cases of Sriracha left... we'll put it in the garage where we had those 4,000 rolls of Charmin a few months ago.
In other news, the Ukrainian War drags on, with Russia capturing a couple of American mercenaries. Inflation is up. Stocks are down. Way down. Gas Prices continue to rise. Way up. Along with food and everything-else prices. Mortgage rates are rising as the Fed raises interest rates.
And this week, the Texas Republican Convention boo'ed and heckled John Cornyn (NRA rated A+) throughout his speech. He had the audacity to speak with Democrats and maybe, just MAYBE draft a bill that would require an investigative period to review gun buyers’ juvenile court, police and mental health records if they are under 21 years of age. Which, of course, threatens your "God Given" right to buy guns. They may have to take the + away from his A+ NRA rating. Those wacky Republicans. They also
...approved measures declaring that President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected” and rebuking Sen. John Cornyn for taking part in bipartisan gun talks. They also voted on a platform that declares homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and calls for Texas schoolchildren “to learn about the humanity of the preborn child.” -Texas Tribune
The Texas Log Cabin Republicans were upset that the Texas GOP still won't let them have a booth at the convention, and thinks that they should "expand the tent" to include them. Those Log Cabin Kids. They're adorable.
In the meantime, let's all order a Xanax and Tonic and see what our Outlaws wrote about this week:
As he applied for a loan to fill up the rolling collection of scrap metal he calls a Jeep, it occurred to Roger Gray that maybe those previously mentioned gas prices would be a good subject this week. There is certainly no end of blame-placing on the internet, and most of it is wrong. So he explains why prices are high. Will it matter to those who are yelling on Facebook? Of course not.
Early on in James Moore's career, he worked in Laredo where a drifter met with him and insisted that he had the research that would bring down the crooks that were running the city. And you know what? He did. The story of a tenacious hitchhiker that wanted to see people treated fairly.
As he applied for a loan to fill up the rolling collection of scrap metal he calls a Jeep, it occurred to Roger Gray, maybe gas prices would be a good subject this week. There is certainly no end of blame-placing on the internet, and most of it is wrong. So he explains why prices are high. Will it matter to those who are yelling on Facebook? Of course not.
Ever heard of a UAO? Kinda like a UFO, except from Amarillo. Myra Jolivet was intrigued. And thinks we might ease up on our arrogance that insists that we are alone in this (fairly large!) universe.
oh yeah, one more. I threw in this week with a piece about the crime scene photos from Uvalde. The photos that are shielded from the public eye. The photos of the awful carnage of these school shootings - the images of massacred children. An awful idea? Or one that might have enough power to change our country's views on guns? Historically, other powerful photos have had extraordinary impact. Would it change anything if we were made to actually see what we've done?