Old Bay Hot Sauce: PRECIOUS IS MINE!

Why is master wanting my precious?

So an old friend from college, who lives in Ohio, contacted me in February and asked if I could pick up a bottle or six for her of McCormick's "Old Bay" brand hot sauce because she couldn't find it anywhere.

Frankly, Cookie was gobsmacked.

"Six bottles of that Old Bay Hot Sauce?  Just what the hell is Marilyn smoking?" I said to my husband.

Long story short, McCormick, the spice company, is an old-line Baltimore company.  Now its based about five freeway exits from the beltway in Hunt Valley.  And someone got it in their mind that it would be wonderful to mix up a batch of hot sauce and dump in some Old Bay, bottle it and sell it in a limited edition.  Locals have been doing it indirectly with hot sauce and the spice from the tin.   Well, once that hot sauce sits for a which with the Old Bay in the bottle, it gets really tasty.

The problem is, McCormick is making it in small batches to test the market and create buzz.  Well, let me tell you, before the toilet paper, and paper towel shortages thanks to COVID-19, Old Bay Hot Sauce was like a unicorn in the wild.  A store would get it in and the consumers were like fighting one and other for it.

And it kept selling out.

INTO THIS, came Marilyn who was asking for the six bottles.  SIX? Why not ask me to steal some jewelry, cause it would be easier to find and pull off than buy six bottles of the stuff.

Still, Cookie loves a challenge. So I undertook the task with gusto.  I had no luck, but I was stopping at every market you could imagine trying to find this item.  I looked for weeks, nada.  At one point, I started to feel like Gollum searching for precious.  The color of the sauce was certainly the color of the lava in Mount Doom.

And then COVID-19 upended our world.

I still looked, people were buying all sorts of stuff.  At the Safeway in Towson, at one point the hot sauce section was bare, just down to a bottle of something green that looked angry when you picked it up.

This is the God Damned Stuff, Man...

So yesterday, Cookie is out and about trying to find Swiffers (they too have progressed to Unicorn status) and I stop at this supermarket that we never patronize because it's really out of the way, and the smell of stale air permeates the place, as does the smell of moth crystals.  Still, Cookie will go deep to find Campbell's Tomato Rice Soup.  And as I look at the sad produce department and then move on to the sad deli department, and on my way to the sad meat I noticed some sad little product on the top of the counter and it was in a blue, yellow and red bottle and the color was that hot sauce orange that I avoid (delicate stomach) it was some sad hot sauce that a rep dropped off and probably said: "try and sell a couple of these, will you?"

And then I walked down the to paper towel section and I thought "well what do we have here? Bounty?  Name brand paper towels?"  And just as I reached for that last eight pack of real paper towels I thought...

"JESUS! THAT WAS THE GOD DAMNED HOT SAUCE!"

Well, I turned around so fast that I just about knocked this old woman over.  BUT I HAD TO GET THAT SAUCE!  By the time I returned all but two were gone.  So, reader, I grabbed them for Marilyn.  Upon seeing them at home, the Husband said, he would have never thought that was it. "They're kind of small.  I was expecting a bigger bottle."

I know, so did I!  Then I told him how I passed them by and then almost knocked over an old woman.

And then the husband says, maybe they'll have more tomorrow morning.

Needless to say, Cookie couldn't sleep.  I was up at 4:30AM today at the idea that they might have more.

And they did.  The guy was putting them out and I asked what the limit was.

"There's no limit.  People are so freaked out about COVID, they aren't rushing the store for this."

So I got four bottles.  And guess what else, that old woman was back in the store this morning.  We ran into each other while social distancing at check out number 6.

She looked at me, and then she looked in my cart.

"My, that certainly is a lot of hot sauce," says she, all judgy like.

And that's when I went full-on Gollum on her and snarled "PRECIOUS IS MINE!"  Then I gave her that rolly eyed look that only CGI make.  That scared her, and she darted to Check Out 3.

I did get a hold of Marilyn and tomorrow I will figure out how to send this to her.  And yes, I will be able to part with the stuff.  Marilyn is thrilled, and am I.  I am glad I can give this to her.   So now to find a box and packing for the glass.

Unlike Gollum, I can live without this precious.