Chili Pepper Fiesta -- More Fun than You Thought.

More fun than I thought, anyway. I got there at 3:30 after locking up my bike on flatbush and headed in to meet my former roomie at the ice-cream cart. We lickety split got some spicy food and sat down to listen to the bands. We heard the "Weary Boys" who were good, followed by the Lost Bayou Ramblers, of Lafayette, Louisiana. who I liked more. I haven't gone to any of the many Katrina benefits over the last month (but I did give money), so I had missed out on hearing that cajun sound that always makes me think of New Orleans. So, I was hugely impressed by the Lost Bayou Ramblers, but I wondered whether I knew enough to know what was what. Now that I've read their bio, I can see how it is that they can be so young and so good at playing traditional music. They learned it in the family; two of the players are brothers, and their Dad and his brothers were les Freres Michot. Interestingly, the senior Michots seem to have performed for a lot of Republicans (and a few democrats), but the sons named themselves "Lost Bayou" partly because of their environmentalist leanings, which is all good.
So, after watching young Ariadne, pictured below, cut a rug in the grass, we headed into the tent to watch the show. The music had a great effect on everyone around, as you can see from the pictures. Like a lot of Prospect Park events, The Botannical Garden's chili pepper fiesta brought people from every one of Brooklyn's communities out for a wonderful picnic. and the sauce.
IT was hard to pick a favorite in the tummy-burning tasting, but I'd have to vote for the habanero fig combination from ha ha hot sauce - of Philadelphia and the super hot habanero sauce from Guyank brand, which is meant to stand for the collision between Yankee and Guyanese. They say, Oour sauce is Tasty Hot as a result of a thirteen-year chemical reaction gone good between a Guyanese Woman and a Yankee Man; OH YEAH!!! Sweet! HOT! OUCH!! After tasting several sauces and finishing off with the fig and habanero (or maybe fig and jalapeno?) mixture which I think was called "Figgin Hot," my lips were on fire. In a nice way, I mean.