Chiming in from Western Canada to say that the situation is similar here. As a true Canadian, I also don’t care for really spicy food, but have noticed that hot sauce is pretty rare up here.
On TV, it’s all over the place in the US. Must be our limited Hispanic population or something.
Your equating Multi-Cultural demographics with intergration, not so. We are still primarily an American/European dining population and businesses reflect what the customer wants.
Chicken wings were the last major spicy food product that was marketed depending on your spice threshhold, mild, hot, extrahot, homocide etc.
Its not impossible to find fine dining within a twenty mile radius, depending on how adventerous you are, or bored with standard bland. Indian, thai, even mongolian, was within ten minutes of where I live and they do well enough, just that we as a population are not gravitating to the more spicey ( naplam) entrees.
You would need a poll to determine, how that equates across Canada and within provincial zones to see if what I said reflects the average Canadian.
Declan
Just do what I do; get some medium salsa and add hot sauce to it. I love hot sauce and if I get the hot salsa then it gets TOO hot and I can’t eat because of the burning pain. My stepdad just brought back a bottle of some vile vial from Mexico. The goop inside is green and opaque, and it rapes the tongue ever so slightly. Delicious when added to the bland medium salsa.
There’s Chilly Chilesin Navan, West of Ottawa. That sells just just da hot shit mon.
My co-worker who lives nearby who also loves hot food picks me up a couple of bottles of Hot sauces whenever he’s nearby, I love the labels on some of these bottles. They also sell “hot” salsa. I noticed only 1 is rated a 10 for hot level the next highest level is 7.
I like hot food sometimes. I have some chili sauce made from the jolokia or “ghost pepper” that supposedly rates a megascoville, but I’m not so sure. There is food out there that I can’t eat; it just tastes like pain. However, I can put this sauce on stuff. Yeah, it burns a lot, but I think perhaps it’s not as potent as advertised. Granted I’m not drinking it with a straw.
And, y’know, that’d be fine if that was the end of it. But it’s not. It never is. They always have to come back and say you’re a wimp or a weakling, implying that you should just deal with it. If you use the word “wimp” to describe someone like me, then you’re tacitly admitting that the pepper causes pain, not pleasure. It’s not the different-strokes nature of it that gets me, it’s the suggestion that one should just put up with a little discomfort in their food.
Me: I don’t like chocolate ice cream, which tastes a little bitter. I like vanilla.
You: ::Shrug::
Me: I don’t like wheat bread. It tastes dry. I like white.
You: ::Indifference::
Me: I don’t like spicy food. It’s painful. I like non-spicy food.
You: WIMP!!
I mean, WTF is your problem(s)?:mad:
I don’t mind that there are people who can’t do spicy. Means that there’s all the more for me! In honor of their sacrifice, I picked up a tub of fresh salsa from the worst Mexican restaurant in town this morning, and am sitting here, sipping a beer and chomping down on some chips and amazingly fresh and hot salsa.
Salud!
Herdez is hot, or can be, but it’s watery and isn’t really intended for use with chips. It’s fine in fajitas and cooking and whatnot, but for chips it’s just not a good salsa.
I agree with whomever suggest just taking Pace and adding some hot sauce. I like my hot foods HOT. When i go into Indian restaurants I tell them to spare me the white people food and serve the real stuff.
Well, I married Imp of the Perverse, and I’m living here in non-spicy land, so I’ll have to go for option B. Making my own is starting to look like a good option.
Herdez is hot, or can be, but it’s watery and isn’t really intended for use with chips. It’s fine in fajitas and cooking and whatnot, but for chips it’s just not a good salsa.
I agree with whomever suggest just taking Pace and adding some hot sauce. I like my hot foods HOT. When i go into Indian restaurants I tell them to spare me the white people food and serve the real stuff.
You better start growing your own peppers then. Doesn’t sound like the local grocery is going to have much to offer in that area.
Just because it’s made from ghost pepper doesn’t mean it’s as hot as ghost pepper. It’s almost certainly diluted to at least some degree (at the very least, it’s probably mixed in with vinegar), plus of course you’re diluting it more when you put it on food. Between all that, it wouldn’t be at all hard to get a dilution of thousands or tens of thousands to one, bringing it down to below jalapeno, or even peperoncini, level.
It tain’t just yer Canadjuns what’s wimpy in the tongual area. I have trouble finding Cheetos Flamin’ Hot here in semi-rural New England. Living in Texas, I didn’t realize they were considered a specialty flavor elsewhere. Up here, I’ve found one mini mart within a 30-mile radius that sometimes carries them. Forget about the Limón version altogether. 
From what I understand, you can’t grow good hot peppers in Canada because of the climate.
I recommend making your owned cooked salsa, which is closer to the stuff you find in jars than fresh salsa. It’s really easy, just blenderize tomatoes, onions, and hot peppers, then cook the mixture over the stove for about 15 minutes.
That’s the first thing we start looking for when we head south of the border. I loves me some Flamin’ Hot Limon Cheetos. 
You might try your local farmer’s market, Leaffan. We’ve got about 15 bottles of hot sauces from micro-“breweries” that range from painful to burn your face off.
Because you’re wrong and a wimp to boot. Hello, McFly?
Let me guess. You tried a single sip of alcohol once and “didn’t care for the taste”, too? Do you cook your vegetables to a soft mush or smother them in cheese? Can you handle the occasional stinky cheese? Drink “coffee” in the form of frappachinos?
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are indeed good (they remind me of a really great wing place I used to go to), but the (not as hot) jalapeno cheddar ones are even better.
For the record, by the way, capsaicin does not cause chemical burns. It just triggers the heat receptors in mammals, so it feels like it’s burning, even though it isn’t. Birds, meanwhile, have different receptors, and are apparently completely unaffected by it in any concentration.
I don’t know what your definition of “good” is in the context, but I manage to grow a few hot (yes, hot) peppers in my garden every year.
Leaffan, not sure if it’s available in eastern Canada, but out here, we can get Wholly Salsa. The medium has about the heat of your average brand’s “hot”; and the hot is downright dangerous. Look for it in the cold cases of the produce section of the supermarket.
Yeah, from what I understand (which admittedly isn’t all that much about gardening) it’s just that it’s hard to do because the growing season is so short. In Texas, tomatoes and peppers can literally grow as weeds if you’re not careful about the seeds, and you can harvest from good varieties for several months. Up Nawth a bit, you have to nurture those nightshade plants like the hypersensitive emo kids they become there, starting them as seedlings indoors and racing autumn for your first handful of ripe fruits.
I don’t think the capsaicin content is directly affected by the growing conditions, though I could be wrong – it’s just that the plants themselves don’t thrive without extended heat.