2009 turned out great for the site. Earlier this year I decided to change the focus from a plethora of topics to almost exclusively spicy foods. I’ve tried to work hard at developing the kind of hot sauce/fiery food blog that I would want to read, and hopefully some of you folks have liked what you’ve seen. I feel 2010 is going to be an even bigger. I’m really excited about the coming year and what is in store for this site.
Some of the things I’ll continue to do:
• Do reviews of hot sauces, BBQ sauces, spicy condiments & snacks, and other tasty products.
• Interview more of the most fascinating folks in the hot sauce universe in the FireTalkers series.
• Deliver the Burn Buzz, where I regularly cover spicy news and peppery happenings from around the world.
• Post more recipes on the foods chileheads love: wings, chili, barbecue, Mexican/Southwestern U.S., and more.
• Post reviews and articles on Peppers And More.
• Record hot sauce reviews for the Hot Sauce Weekly podcast.
• Attend industry trade shows such as the Fiery Foods and BBQ Show in March and the Weekend of Fire in August and report back with words and photos almost as they happen. This year, trips to ZestFest and other shows may also be in the cards.:-)
• Pen the monthly “Chilli Letter From America” for the UK site The ChileFoundry.
• Promote cool hot sauce-related stuff on my Twitter and Facebook pages.
• Design more t-shirts and goodies for the Chilehead Tees site.
There’s also some new things in development:
• A tentative hot sauce review project that involves video.
• A website or web service that will help you keep track of updates on hot sauce/chilehead websites and blogs. This may help you to not miss anything new posted on these sites and stay abreast on happenings in the fiery foods world. My goal is to help the spicy food community as a whole by increasing awareness of everyone’s news, reviews and activities.
• A possible St. Louis, Missouri/Southern Illinois area chilehead gathering or event of some kind
• A local hot sauce club
More ideas are bouncing around in my head. Some of these, no doubt, are dumb and/or lame. Others would take gargantuan amounts of time, money and resources (which are already stretched thin with family, a full-time job, website development work and other commitments). If you would like to provide help, feedback or even tips and ideas on how you think anything I’ve mentioned above might better executed, I’m all ears.
Anyway, I want to thank ALL of you for reading my stuff online and for allowing me to be in the fortunate position of being a part of this greater chilehead/foodie community of which we all love. I’m honored and humbled whenever someone takes the time out of their busy schedules to visit my website.
Here’s to a wonderful past year, and an even better and more fruitful year coming ahead. Cheers!