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SACRED WORKS PROJECT
Salem, OR 97302
(503) 428-1035

Authentic Tibetan Hot Sauce

Mama's Fire is traditional Tibetan hot sauce, great for laddling on rice, noodles, curries, eggs and meats... in short, anything you can think of! A warm and smoky mix of organic ginger, locally grown garlic, red chilies, onions and other natural spices, this Tibetan Hotsauce will be sure to rock your culinary world. Anyone who tries it gets addicted, so beware!

All ingredients are fresh and grown in the region. They are flash cooked in expeller-pressed Canola oil, bringing out the sweet, smoky flavors of the onion and garlic. The ginger provides an electric spice route fire that joins with the heat from the chilies to create a blissful and unique flavour that smoulders gently on the tongue.

All batches of Mama's Fire are infused with the good wishes of the sauce's makers. Chanting incantations called mantra, the makers envoke the compassion of Padmasambhava, a legendary saint that brought Buddhism to Tibet.

Mama's Fire is a cottage industry run and supported by the Sacred Works Project. For information about Mama's Fire, or about Sacred Works please drop us a line online

SACRED WORKS PROJECT

Salem, OR
(503) 428-1035

Kalapa seal

Royal Warrant of Appointment

Mama's Fire Hot Sauce is duly recognized as a
Purveyor to the Kalapa Court for the
Year of the Iron Tiger.

Issued by the Master of the Kalapa Court on this
30th day of the 3rd month 2010.


About "the Sauce"

The story

Legend has it that travellers of unknown origin would occasionally visit the market towns nestled up against the Himalayas, paying for food and supplies with ancient coins of a civilization long lost. When questioned, these mysterious visitors would invariably vanish into the hills. A rumor circulated that these wayfarers were citizens of the mythical Kingdom of Shambhala, a land ruled by an enlightened king and populated by a benevolent society. A plan was hatched to trap one of these visitors.

Using a wooden bird call, townsfolk managed to enchant a young man from the market into a storehouse. Due to karmic impurities, the young Shambhalian was unable to distinguish the sound of the bird call from the bird and he fell into the trap. The townsfolk questioned the young man but were unable to get any meaningful information about the legendary Kingdom from him. Only some foolishness like "we are there already."

Eventually, the young man convinced his captors to let him go in exchange for a recipe. An ambrosia, an enchanting sauce the color of gold. When the sauce was produced an alluring fragrance floated through the market attracting all to the cauldron which still bubbled. The ginger and chilies seemed to give wings to an ancient story, told by the unfolding flavors on the tongue. A smoldering heat blessed all those who ate the sauce.

The travellers disappeared after that, but the sauce continued to be made, passed down from generation to generation, and brought to the West by Tibetan students of visiting Tibetan lamas. Since then a growing society of "Tibetan Hot Sauce Enthusiasts" pay tribute to the delicious heat of this unique sauce.

How the sauce is cooked

The technique for making Tibetan Hot Sauce is a lot like Wok cooking, and its unique approach was necessitated by the shortage of fuel for cooking in the high mountains of the Himalayas. With short supplies of firewood, it is more efficient to quickly heat a pot of oil than to simmer it over long hours. In this approach a small pile of fuel - most often yak dung - is used to quickly heat a kettle of oil until smoking. (Blessed with plentiful cooking fuel in the West, we use no Yak dung in our cooking.) The tremendous heat in the smoking oil is enough to flash cook the ingredients, instantly caramelizing the onions, garlic and chilies.

Until you see Tibetan Hot Sauce made you can't imagine the sweet clouds of steam that rise up from a roiling cauldron of "the sauce".

This particular recipe has been handed down through the generations and gently modified to reflect the unique flavors and produce of the local region. In this case only locally grown produce.

Ingredients:

  • expeller pressed canola oil
  • red chilies
  • onions
  • garlic
  • ginger
  • sesame oil
  • vinegar
  • sea salt
  • other spices.

Mama's Fire BBQ Sauce

Using Mama's Fire Hot Sauce as its base, our Tibetan BBQ Sauce is further blended and enhanced with blue agave nectar and additional spices to give it that remarkable smoky taste with a background flavor of tequila. It enriches the taste of all four categories of the meat families; beef and bison, pork, chicken, and fish and shrimp. The sauce moves over the palette much like a good wine with a finish of warmth of the hot sauce. Besides basting meats on the grill or cooking with it in the pan, many of our customers tell us they often pour some in a small dish for the table to dip individual bites in.

I want me some sauce!

Sacred Works

The Sacred Works Project is a non-profit, non-denominational business whose mission is to support projects of a sacred nature. "Sacred" is defined as any endeavor that brings the loving kindness of bodhicitta into the world.

Bodhicitta is a Sanskrit word meaning the fundamental awareness of loving kindness that is intrinsic to all humans. The Sacred Works Project will fund projects in five different areas: scientific research and studies, scholarships for programs of contemplative nature, pilgrimages, education, and the arts.

Find out more about the Sacred Works Project: Click Here

The following projects are currently being sponsored by Sacred Works:

The Africa Documentary Project

The Africa project is a documentary film which will interview 3 key leaders in the African Hospice Care movement. The interviews will then be augmented by coverage of several of the various programs that exist throughout the continent of Africa. The intent is for the audience to get a strong view into the incredible work that is being done in end of life care throughout Africa. The three proposed interviews are:

  • Faith Mwangi-Powell, Director of the African Palliative Care Alliance (APCA)
  • Anne Merriman, Hospice Pioneer and Director of Policy for Hospice Africa
  • Bishop Desmond Tutu, World Leader and Strong Advocate for Hospice in Africa

For the past several years the hospice movement has been growing in countries all over the African continent. Despite challenged access to medications, supplies and medical technology, hospice in Africa is succeeding. This is due partially to the ingenuity of those creating the programs, as well as the commitment of the village communities to care for each other. In a very real way African hospice programs are showing us in the West how hospice should be done, mirroring the roots of the movement as community based work.

The Africa Project is working to raise $100,000 USD to complete this documentary film. The hope is to present this film to the international hospice community and to use it as a tool to teach hospice workers around the world what is taking place in Africa and how as a people they are coming together to deal with the AIDS epidemic in an uplifted and humane way.

  Morning Sun Justice Project

Summary: At the request of individual communities facilitators provide education about the current practices within our justice system and the impact that they are having on our communities. Our facilitation approach is based on the confidence in the inherent sanity of all beings. This confidence has the quality of the midmorning sun in brilliance and warmth. Our facilitators honestly explore the pain and brilliance of each group and our social context. Through this process communities identify their own unique wisdoms. Applying these values communities build and rebuild relationships as well as methods of communication based on their own innate warmth, clarity and openness; discovering the sun behind the clouds.

Vision: Creating sane and healing approaches to justice based on individual communities inherent wisdom and values.

History: Karuna Rose Thompson, M.A., founder of Morning Sun Justice was born in 1975 in Boulder, Colorado. She was raised in the same area as a member of the Shambhala Buddhist community founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She is currently an ordained minister through Shambhala International Church. Her education and work has focused on the study and integration of traditional Buddhist practices and theory with forms of social justice and community development. For the past six years she has been a chaplain for the Oregon Department of Corrections. Through her work in prisons and interest in both conventional justice practices and alternative justice practices she has seen the need for a new approach to justice that includes community healing at the core.

Based on her training in restorative justice with Dr. Tom Cavanaugh and his focus on "values based" models mixed with her Buddhist background the Morning Sun Justice vision was born. This approach is based on the assumption of goodness in all people, communities and things. Through identifying what is working in a community and what has carried them the facilitators are then able to walk with the group through the deeper pains and sorrows with the touchstone of their root values carrying the process. Ideally the facilitation model is one of collaboration. While there may be one or two outside facilitators the primary facilitation is done by and through members of the community doing the work. This approach provides education directed towards cutting through the learned helplessness of our society; allowing people to see their own freedom and strength. While it is a "visionary process" the outcome is practical, applicable actions that make sense to the community that has come together because the responses are based on their values, not imposed structures that should be good for them.

Valmont Butte Preservation

The sacred works project has committed to helping the Valmont Butte Heritage Alliance in its efforts to protect the Valmont Butte which is a sacred site for the indigenous peoples of the Boulder, Colorado area. The Alliance has completed negotiations with the city of Boulder and now has the ability to buy the land back from Boulder County. The Alliance is now working to raise monies to buy the Valmont Butte so that it will be protected on an ongoing basis from development and waste disposal.

The Vidyadhara Tales

The Sacred Works Project has committed to support a book project that has been in process for over seven years. Seventy four interviews have been collected with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's close students and the children who grew up in his community and are presently being transcribed by volunteers to put together into a book of empowerments and stories of the Vidyadhara during his seventeen years in the United States.

Tibetan Hot Sauce Recipes

Here are a few of our first recipe submissions from aficionados like you!

  1. Spicy Peanut Sauce
  2. Pokeharah Eggplant Dip
  3. Chicken Pesto
  4. Jesse's Easy Shrimp
  5. Smoldering Taco Meat
  6. Chicken Pesto
  7. Microwave Popcorn
  8. Tuna Fish salad

Spicy Peanut Sauce Recipe

6 tbsNatural Peanut Butter
3 tbs Soy or Teriyaki Sauce
2 tbs Mama's Fire Tibetan Hot Sauce (to taste)
2 tbsHoney

Put ingredients in a pot over a low heat and mix until warm cover vegetables, meat, noodles, eggs or French fries.

Recipe submitted by Kitty Badson

  Pokeharah Eggplant Dip

2 Small European Purple eggplants 6" long and 3" in diameter
2Cloves garlic chopped
4 tbsTahini
HandfulGround walnuts
1tsp Ground cumin
Juice of a lemon
2 tbs chopped basil + sprigs for garnish
1/8 cup Mama's Fire Traditional Tibetan Hot Sauce

Mix it all together and you've got an amazing dip.

Chicken Pesto

1 BoxBow tie pasta
3Chicken Breasts
1 package 4 ozPesto
3 clovesFresh Garlic
2 tbs Olive oil
3 tbs Tibetan hot sauce oil

Start by boiling water in a large pot with olive oil for the pasta. While the water is boiling cut chicken into bite size pieces and cook meat in the Tibetan hot sauce oil until almost down. Finely chop the fresh garlic. When meat is almost done add garlic and brown the chicken. While this is happening add pasta into water and let cook until done. Drain pasta and put back in the boiling pot. Add chicken and pesto stir until pesto is entirely mixed in with your pasta. Pesto is ready to serve.

  Jesse's Easy Shrimp

1 lbPeeled Shrimp
1Sliced Bell Pepper
1Sliced Onion
1/4 CupSoy Sauce
3 tbs Mama's Fire
3 tbs Olive Oil
2 tbs Butter

Place olive oil and veggies in a pan cook covered on a medium heat until they are almost soft and water has formed in the pan. Add the shrimp making sure to clean out the intestinal track on the tip side and the guts on the bottom (failing to do this really makes the shrimp taste foul. I know having made this mistake myself). Add soy sauce, Tibetan hot sauce and butter and cook the shrimp until pink and tender. Take of the heat let stand for 2 minutes, this give the butter a chance to thicken the broth, and enjoy.

Smoldering Taco Meat

2 lbshamburger meat
1large onion
1tsp sea salt
3 tbscilantro
3 tspTibetan hot Sauce paste
2 clovesfresh garlic

Cut half the onion in bite size pieces the use the other half of the onion by dicing it finely for a taco topping. Cut cilantro up finely. Cut garlic cloves finely. Place onion, cilantro, garlic and peppers into pan with 2 tablespoons of the Tibetan hot sauce oil cook until onions are golden. Add one cup of water, hamburger meat, let boiling water cook meat while you break it apart. When the water has boiled off add 3 teaspoons of Tibetan hot sauce paste and brown the meat. When the meat has been browned it is ready to serve with any and all variations of tacos that might tempt your palate.

  Microwave Popcorn

1 packageMicrowave Popcorn
1 tsp Tibetan hot sauce oil

Put microwave popcorn in microwave until done. Put popcorn in a large bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of Tibetan hot sauce oil and stir thoroughly and serve.

  Tuna Fish salad

2 cansTuna
3 tbsMayo
1 tsp Tibetan hot sauce paste
1onion (or scallion) finely chopped.

Mix ingredients together and serve.

Submit a recipe of your own!

Mama's Fire Authentic Tibetan Hotsauce

Product Info:
1 jar - 8.9 oz (252g)
$6.25 USD + $5.85 S & H
(Order two bottles and pay shipping for the price of one!)

Shipping Costs

1-2 Jars $5.85 S & H
3-6 Jars $9.00 S & H

A perfect sauce for any food you can think to put it on. Soon you'll be eating food only as an excuse to eat more Tibetan Hot Sauce!

Mama's Fire Tibetan BBQ Sauce

Product Info:
1 jar - 13.7 oz (388g)
$6.25 USD + $5.85 S & H
(Order two bottles and pay shipping for the price of one!)

Shipping Costs

1-2 Jars $5.85 S & H
3-6 Jars $9.00 S & H

Now available at Whole Foods in Boulder, CO. Tell your Whole Foods manager you'd like Mama's Fire stocked in your local store!

Wholesale prices:
To make a wholesale order, contact us at sacredworks@gmail.com, or (503) 428-1035.

All proceeds support the operations of the Sacred Works Project whose mission is to support sacred project around the world.


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Testimonials:

"It has a robust flavor but not overwhelming. The heat enhances the flavor of the food."

    - George, Properties specialist III, Salem OR

Check out Founder Jesse Thompson's Blog


Find our sauce at these distinguished stores

California
Palo Alto:
Willows Market
http://www.willowsmarket.com/

San Francisco:
Rainbow Cooperative
http://www.rainbowgrocery.org/

New Mexico Cooperatives
Taos, NM:
Cid's Food Market
http://www.cidsfoodmarket.com/

Oregon Cooperative Markets
Ashland, OR:
http://www.ashlandfood.coop/

Astoria, OR:
http://www.astoriacoop.org/

Corvallis, OR:
First Alternatives
http://firstalt.coop/

Eugene, OR:
Cappella Market
http://www.capellamarket.com/

Newman's Fish Market
http://www.newmansfish.com/

Red Barn Grocery
http://www.redbarnnaturalgrocery.com/

Kiva Market
http://www.kivagrocery.com/

Portland, OR:
Food Front
http://www.foodfront.coop/

Highway 101, Tillamook, OR:
Bear Creek Artichokes
http://bearcreekartichokes.com/

Washington Cooperatives
Ellensburg, WA:
Carlson's Market

Seattle, WA:
Madison Market
http://www.madisonmarket.com/

Samadhi Cushions
http://www.samadhicushions.com/

Colorado
Boulder, CO :
Ideal Market:
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/alpineideal/

Baseline Store:
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/baseline/

Pearl Street Store:
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/boulder/

Centennial, CO:
Whole Foods Market -- South Glenn:
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/southglenn/

Colorado Springs, CO:
Whole Foods Market -- First and Main :
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/newcenterpoint/

Whole Foods Market -- Pikes Peak
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/coloradosprings/

Denver, CO:
Whole Foods Market -- Tamarac
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/tamarac/

Fort Collins, CO:
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/fortcollins/

Glendale, CO:
Whole Foods Market -- Colorado Blvd
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/coloradoblvd/

Golden, CO:
Whole Foods Market -- Colfax
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/colfax/

Lakewood, CO:
Whole Foods Market -- Belmar
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/belmar/

Westminster, CO:
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/westminster/

New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM:
Academy Whole Foods
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/albuquerque/

Indian School Whole Foods
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/indianschoolplaza

Santa Fe, NM:
Whole Foods Market -- St. Francis
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/stfrancis/

Cerrillos
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/santafe/

Oregon
Bend, OR
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/bend/

Hillsboro, OR
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/tanasbourne/

Portland, OR
Fremont http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/fremont/
Hollywood http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/sandy/
Laurelhurst http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/laurelhurst/
Pearl http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/pearl/

Salem, OR
http://www.ventiscafe.com/
www.ilovecafenoir.vpweb.com/
http://www.lifesourcenaturalfoods.com/

Tigard, OR
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/tigard/

Kansas
Overland Park, KS:
Whole Foods Market -- 91st and Metcalf
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/metcalf/
119th St store http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/overlandpark/

Utah
Salt Lake City, UT:
Sugarhouse Whole Foods
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/sugarhouse/

Washington
Seattle, WA
Interbay http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/interbay/
Roosevelt Square http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/rooseveltsquare/
Westlake http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/westlake/

Vancouver, WA
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/millplain/

Restaurants:
Venti's Cafe
http://www.ventiscafe.com/

Your Co-op (or Whole Foods) doesn't carry it yet? Let them know you gotta have it.