アジアンドラッグのトランスBlog

I feel that a lot of life operates on the pleasure-pain principle. That being that levels of pleasure are directly proportionate to levels of pain. If everything were candy-sweet, life would be intolerably dull.
And so, enter the hot sauce. It's a relatively harmless (your bowels might not agree, but...) way to inflict an amount of pain on yourself, with which you can later reap the pleasurable reward. That wonderful dopamine rush...

So I've come accustomed to putting hot sauce on everything. Ramen, chinese food, cheese.

A few months back, I was at Metro M, the shopping center above Korakuen Station. It's there, on the second floor, that I found this wonderful little store that sells mostly candy, but they also have a section for spicy food. Most of it's taken up with kimchi and other Korean snacks, but there's one shelf dedicated solely to one product.

Blair's Death Sauce (visit their homepage)
This stuff is great. It's the perfect level of spice for the spice connoisseur. It's not ridiculously hot, but it adds just enough kick to make your meal enjoyable.

It comes in several varieties, but I recommend Original. I bought the Sudden Death variety, and I've had it for several months, sitting in my refrigerator, simply because I can only eat a small drop at a time.
Try a tiny drop (about the size of your fingernail) of Sudden Death sauce on a block of camembert...

By the way, that's 350ml!!
Tabasco (visit their homepage)

The classic of hot sauce. A slight bite, but mostly a nice sour tang.
I usually use it on pizza these days, but if I'm cooking, it's almost certainly an essential ingredient.

I found this big bottle at Seijo-Ishii Supermarket on the first floor of LaQua, across from Tokyo Dome. It's about ¥1000, but I think it's a much better value than the smaller bottles.

Also, the Tabasco Chipotle sauce is great, too. It works well with gyoza.

Sriracha Sauce

This is Sriracha Sauce, named after a town in Thailand where it comes from. It has a slightly spicy, slightly sweet flavor. It goes especially well with Chinese or Thai food.

When I was a college student, and I was too busy to make a proper meal, I'd buy a loaf of french bread, and just break off pieces and put a drop of sriracha sauce on each one. It provided a nice dopamine rush.
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Another method of maintaining mental health is proper nutrition. It may sound trivial, but it really does play a big part in how we feel.

Again, as a college student, I had a lot of trouble getting out of bed and going to class. Not because of hangovers, either.
And so, an old Tibetan man gave me some advice: eat a lot of bean sprouts. In other words, moyashi.

Being a vegetarian, I find it very hard to get enough nutrition, and so I've come to rely on moyashi. It doesn't hurt that it's only about ¥39 for a bag... (^-^)

So now, for lunch, I find myself eating a bag of moyashi, covered in hot sauce. It's a bit... odd. The somewhat sour flavor of the bean sprouts and the tangy flavor of the hotsauce... but it's alright. It helps me relax.

And again, it's cheap...

I'm not sure where I was going with this update, so I'll close now.

If you enjoyed this, and you want to hear my recipes for bowel cleansing brown rice rizotto (玄米リゾット・・・ファイバーデトックス！）, I'll write about that next time.