Peppers felled by tornado bring heat to B.C. hot sauce
When a tornado touched down on Thiara Farm on Sept. 30 it destroyed everything in its path — but it also had some unintended results.
Meteorologist and storm chaser Mark Robinson was on the scene at the Brock Road farm interviewing the Thiaras for The Weather Network when the farmers told him about the peppers being harvested and scattered about the property.
That gave him an idea. “One of our other correspondents for The Weather Network knows how to make hot sauce,” he said, of British Columbia-based correspondent Mia Gordon, who had casually mentioned making some.
So Robinson picked some of the peppers in the field and with the Thiara family’s blessing, shipped a box of tornado-picked peppers and waited for the results.
Robinson explained that when he pitched the hot sauce idea to the family, they thought it was “hilarious” but were also upset at the time as they worried about the loss and insurance wouldn’t cover all of the damage.
Still, they helped to gather up the peppers that were days away from being harvested when the tornado came upon them.
“We basically grabbed a couple of bags of them in the damage path itself of the tornado,” he said, noting he was careful to make sure he only gathered peppers picked by the storm and not taken off the plant.
In the end, the box of peppers yielded two jars of hot sauce — and although hot sauce usually doesn’t sit well with Robinson, he enjoys this one.
“This is so good, even though it’s hot, it’s so good.”