Years ago, before you could find anything you wanted on the Internet, we used to drool over catalogs from Salsa Express, with every sort of salsa and hot sauce imaginable. One year I even ordered hubby some habanero brittle for Christmas!

These days, we're finding some fantastic hot sauce locally. Earlier this year, we discovered African Rhino Peri-Peri Hot Sauce, made in Vestavia Hills.

Recently at the Pepper Place Market, we discovered another great local hot sauce: Not Yo Mama's, based in Homewood. Their original product is a pepper marmalade, made with red and yellow sweet bell peppers, cane sugar, cider vinegar, orange zest, mango, and serrano peppers. The slightly spicy, sweet and sour marmalade is great poured over cream cheese with crackers for a quick and easy appetizer, or as a glaze for pork or chicken or seafood. I'm not usually wild about the salsa-poured-over-cream-cheese trick, but this was really good, and I promptly bought a jar. There's also a hotter version made with habanero peppers. The marmalade was featured in Southern Living last December.

What I really loved, though, was the habanero hot sauce. Many habanero hot sauces have so much heat, it's hard to taste anything else. Not Yo Mama's is nice and hot, but also has a great flavor. We've had it on beans and rice, a spinach-and-goat-cheese quesadilla, eggs and more. 

Right now, the hot sauce is only available at the Not Yo Mama's booths at Pepper Place Market and the Ross Bridge farmers market. It should be available for retail before the end of the year. You can order the marmalades online and find it at stores, and their Bloody Mary mix will be on the site and in stores hopefully by the end of the month.