But what intrigued me was the "smokey sweet". It sets it apart. Gluten free around here is tiring.

It doesn't hurt that there's already a Hazelwood Neighborhood in Portland.

Texan's must prefer "Award Winning", whereas Oregonian's go for "All Natural".

Check out the website:
http://www.hazelwoodsfoods.com/index.html

Every page has Go Texan!

Maybe some of the more creative types on this blog can help him make the Portlandia marketing change?

Go Portlandia!
Go Rain!
Go Beaverducks!
Go Vegan!

Gluten, schmooten.

Whats the deal on the high fructrose corn syrup content?

Or corn syrup generally?

After all, its labeled "sweet"!

I hate to take a contrary position here to my beloved Bogettes, but before you knock the gluten-free label, you should read a book like "Wheat Belly", and educate yourself as to what's happened to traditional wheat over the last 50 years. Hybridization has essentially created a new plant that bears little resemblance to the wheat of Biblical times, or even our great grandmothers'.

When strains of wheat are crossed the genes from each accumulate, and some new enzymes show up that are in neither of the earlier strains. We've screwed with this plant more and more, until we've finally ended up with a nutritional nightmare. The list of things the new frankenstein wheat can affect is stunning. At this point, if you have anything wrong with you, try quitting wheat for 3 months and see if it gets better. The stuff is hard to avoid, of course. It's even in postage stamps.

There are people with gout like symptoms who had swollen joints and were literally crawling across the floor, who quit wheat and can now walk again.

This is not genetic engineering as much as hybridization. Interestingly you can still get original wheat strains but they are very rare. Most of the new stuff has been developed by scientists over the last 50 years, and the results are not pretty. As I told a friend of mine whose kid is having digestion problems, it doesn't hurt to see if the problem is wheat. Gluten-free is not some new age, Portlandia thing. The new age product is the wheat itself.

Please don't tell us if to fit in here he adopts some kinky behavior while mixing the blend.

Gluten-free is not some new age, Portlandia thing.

But it sure ain't a Texas thing.

The Hazelwood neighborhood is not necessarily known for its cuisine. Maybe cheap bars and fast food, but definitely not gourmet food products.

Hey - don't dis Hazelwood! This is where I grew up, and I can attest to delicious meals at home as well as delicious meals at school.
We were one of the first neighborhoods with pizza (Shakey's) and a fantabulous Chinese restaurant (Chinese Garden on 122nd). Sayers Old Country Kitchen wasn't too far away and Tad's was just out Halsey street. The Inferno was a happening place and Van's had the BEST drivein cuisine around.

He must be lying to you, no one would ever move from the paradise of perfection that is Texas to the antibusiness, government run amok, bureaucratic car-hating nightmare, tax-hell with perpetual overcast that is Oregon.

One more suggestion:

All he needs is a pic on the label showing him making salsa deliveries on a bicycle pulling a trailer. It doesn't have to be TRUE... it just needs to LOOK believable to the gullible.

no one would ever move from the paradise of perfection

He has a grandchild here now. I'm sure he never would have moved otherwise.

Bill McDonald -

For a guy who claims to write and sell jokes for a living, you seem to miss a lot of humor.

You might want to get t your funnybone checked. It seems to be AWOL

I never said I was getting rich doing it.

As someone who was a fan of Hazelwood salsa while it was still being made down here, I can understand why he moved up there. You may laugh at first, but your neck of the woods is getting quite the reputation for extremely spicy foods. The big ZestFest show ran outside of Dallas last weekend, and you'd think that half of Portland was a vendor, based on the number of vendors with unique items made specifically for ZestFest. I don't know if it's access to better tomatoes, a better business climate for canned foods, or if the state is offering better tax deals, but I'm not complaining if the end results are this good.

By the way, for those wondering about the "GO TEXAN" tags, I don't blame Hazelwood for using that, too. It really doesn't mean all that much: any Texas-based agricultural business can apply for the GO TEXAN program, and it's a bit of a point of honor for the state Department of Agriculture to get as many spicy foods manufacturers as it can. That said, I'm finally filing to join the program this year: it has lots and lots of salsa manufacturers, but there's no entry for carnivorous plant ranchers...yet.

Gluten made the West great! To Bill McDonald, as we say in Latin: Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure. I can't hear you; I have a banana in my ear. (Gluten-free banana, note.)

When in Rome indeed...toga up your salsa. Nothing says Salsa like Oregon.