Shine Tries It: Dave's Hot Sauce and Garden Spray
Every Friday Shine editors road-test unusual products and unbelievable promises to find out what lives up to the hype and what doesn't. Warning: don't try any of this at home until we do.
This week (in all of its randomness): Dave's Gourmet Hot Sauce and Garden Spray. It's a hot sauce, it's a garden spray-it's…both! As appetizing as that (doesn't) sound and as (not so) thrilled as I was with the idea of sharing my food with my plants, I had to find out if it lived up to the hype.
This multipurpose spray supposedly keeps unwanted intruders off your plants without using pesticides. Just spray it on anything in your garden that you don't want eaten or spray it on a dish that could use a little spice and you have yourself a first-of-its-kind food/ repellent product.
Imagine you're in your backyard on a hot summer day cooking up some dogs and burgers and a deer just so happens to your yard, eyeing your beautiful rose bushes. BAM! A spray for the burger, a spray for the bush, and there you have it: a delicious burger and an untouched rose bush. Can't really get better than that, right?
A collection of ants are always swarming on a potted plant that sits on the windowsill in front of my house. A few squirts of Dave's and I haven't seen the little buggers since. (I can't claim for certain that it was actually the spray, as the ants come and go at their leisure, but I am cautiously optimistic!)
I tested the edible side of this dynamic duo by spraying a generous helping of it onto my scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions. The Habanero Pepper Juice and Cane Vinegar Salt make for a nice combination of spice mixed with a semi-sweet and semi-sharp taste, but the consistency is a bit watery and the spice is definitely more mild than the "warm" temperature advertised.
The "spray" bottle makes it feel a bit like you're misting your meal with Lysol, but if you can get beyond the mental vision of a cleaning product or bug spray, Dave's is, at best, a conversation-starting way to enhance and bring out the flavors in your already spicy foods.
Our verdict: Meh.
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