TM
Established 2013
The B.O.D. Story
The fifty year path to B.O.D. No path through life is a straight line. Each has its share of twists, turns, and side tracks that make it difficult to look ahead and see where it is leading. But tracing backwards through fifty years of my life revealed significant events along the way that had influenced my course and led to the creation of B.O.D.
1946
1947
I was the oldest in my family, the first born after World War II. We lived in Louisville then, where thoroughbreds run in the Kentucky Derby, not far from Ft. Knox where my father had been stationed when he met my mother. By my first birthday we had moved to the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, where my grandparents lived, and where my lifelong journey with food really began. I've been told I made that move in a dresser drawer, in the back of a two-door 1940 Chevy!
The United States is a nation of immigrants. The metropolitan areas around large eastern cities are primarily immigrant communities, and Cleveland is no exception. The tables in the homes of those families were frequently set with foods based on recipes brought from ancestral homelands, which gradually made their way into the community at large. My grandparents wholeheartedly embraced the rich variety of those ethnic dishes, and that appreciation flowed naturally into their home where I spent so much of my early youth.
1952
During those years I would tag along with my grandmother to Frank's Butcher Shop where she would give Frank Sr. her meat order for the next few days' meals. She didn't need to say much to Frank. From years of serving her, he knew exactly how she wanted her meats cut and trimmed. To me, Frank was a gentle giant. With hands the size of small hams, and fingers like the sausages of his native Poland partially hiding the tools of his trade, he worked the heavy meats effortlessly on the thick, deeply worn maple butcher block. The image of him remains clear in my mind to this day.
When those meats made their way to Grandma's table, the setting always included a salt shaker, a pepper grinder, and a bottle of hot sauce. By the time I was in kindergarten, I ate my meat as did the rest of the family . . . well seasoned, including a few drops of hot sauce! It was just the way I learned to eat, sitting at that family table.
1956
The next move took us to Sunnyvale, in California's 'Bay Area', where much of my mother's family had migrated from the Midwest. Even to a nine year old, the abundance and variety of foods offered by the Golden State was a revelation. I was ten in the summer of '57 when I started cooking. Simple things at first, like banana layer cakes with walnuts and maple frosting, shared in Mrs. Lowenstein's sixth grade class. I was already hooked, and there would be no turning back!
I returned home from my all-night high school graduation party in Berkeley at 7AM. By 9AM, my parents had stuffed my brother and sister and me, along with all our luggage, into a 1963 VW Beetle for one last move. We were headed nine hundred miles north to the region around Seattle and the Puget Sound, with its marvelous sea foods. There, in my college years, I needed to start cooking in earnest to feed myself, a task I took to with naive enthusiasm.
1964
Life's pieces were coming together like building blocks. In the following twenty three years, I spent three in Bavaria in the Army, seven studying for three college degrees, and thirteen married, blessed with four incredible children. Each step broadened and deepened my involvement in food and cooking.
As the collection of recipes I had been writing grew, a time came when I realized that neither the hot sauce of my youth, nor any of the many I had tried since provided what I wanted. What I wanted was more flavor, more enhancement, and more versatility than any of them offered.
To fill the void I felt, I decided to create my own sauce. The name, Breath of the Dragon, had come to me before the decision to make it. And since the sauce would only be for use in my own kitchen, and for gifting to friends and family, no decisions for its creation needed to be based on commercial production or viability issues. The experiences of the previous fifty years guided me in selecting ingredients with the potential to produce incomparable flavor. And they were proportioned with that specific goal in mind. The original formula from that first batch remains in B.O.D. today.
1995
2012
2013
In the next seventeen years, hundreds of people tried B.O.D. in and on all manner of foods, and in many head-to-head samplings against other sauces. We knew it was good. But the responses were beyond surprising . . . they were literally unanimous. Never did we see B.O.D. rejected in favor of another sauce!
Then, on the way home from picking up my daughter and son-in-law at the airport for Christmas, we stopped at a favorite restaurant for breakfast. They do a booming business in three Seattle area locations, often with lines of patrons stretching out the door, waiting for one of their renowned, creative breakfasts. However, the hot sauce selection on their tables was fairly standard. So, armed with confidence fueled by B.O.D.'s acceptance, I introduced myself when the owner visited our table. A conversation broke out, resulting in that famous question: "Can you get me a sample?"
Three weeks later I dropped off a couple bottles, and less than an hour later an email arrived: "We all loved the B.O.D. Can you get us a hundred bottles?" For me it was time to put up or shut up . . . win, or go home!
Deliveries of B.O.D. began the following October. From the outset, flavor had been the paramount consideration, and heat was secondary. Thus, the flavor was built first. Then the heat level was raised, but just to a point that did not compromise the flavor. The final result was a sauce with flavor so superior that it captivated seasoned hot sauce lovers, and made believers of many who had never before considered themselves to be hot sauce candidates. And it complimented and enhanced a broader range of foods than any sauce to our knowledge.
B.O.D. is truly a phenomenon in the world of hot sauces. We believe your first taste will convince you!