Here’s a fresh idea from Rachael at Fresh Approach Cooking: Salad dressings that do more than spice up your lettuce leaves. Food from the ‘Hood dressings are made and marketed by the students of Crenshaw High School in an area of Los Angeles that simply ain’t 90210. Proceeds from these condiments help underpriveleged kids pay for college and get a leg up on life.

If you happen to live in Southern California, then just get yourself down to your local Whole Foods and pick up a jar, pronto. And if you are not, not to worry — you can still order up a bottle on Amazon. Rachael even takes it one step further and includes a mushroom recipe that uses the tangy Italian dressing for your next tapas party. Take that, Paul Newman.

Hotness is the new hottness – you heard it here first. There’s something about hot sauce in its many incendiary incarnations that inspires a certain fire in the belly among people everywhere. And so read on as we bring you a world of hurt.

Nine times out of ten, the first word that will pass a pair of burning lips is Tabasco. Pepperheads everywhere consider this the sine qua non of seasoning, and rallymatt is so dedicated to the stuff he goes whole hog and buys it up by the gallon, which our very own NOTCOT appreciates on a more ironic level: “The idea of having this sitting on a shelf - maybe next to a shot glass. All alone. Seems amusing enough to have to get a GALLON jug of the stuff.” Jonathanwhite likes the stuff just fine … with a little doctoring. “I make our house hot sauce by mixing equal part of Tabasco and chilpotle peppers. It sits on our table next to the salt and pepper, the kids call it ‘dad’s ketchup.’” Take that, Heinz.

...continued: Hot Stuff Coming Through

We promise to stop posting about hot stuff when we run out of bloggers who do so. Currently, we’re projecting that for winter of 2012. We just love that there are kerjillions of food-focused bloggers out there who share our passion for fiery foods and the ingredients that make them. Erin of Erin’s Kitchen calls out one of our all-time favorites: Harissa. This Middle-Eastern spice (really more of a condiment) pumps up a wide variety of dishes, and is more fragrant and complex than most hot sauces. Erin’s favorite comes in a convenient tube, so you can use it in small quantites and not spoil the rest.

As you might have noticed, we have a thing for hot stuff, and we have a thing for sweet things. Clearly, we’re not alone in that regard. Lovely Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry has been dipping into her favorite piquantly pleasing condiment, Stonewall Kitchen’s Maple-Chipotle Grille Sauce. Now until they start making blogs with taste-o-vision (or until our order arrives), we’re just going to have to use our imagination, but we’re already licking our chops just thinking about the combination of nutty-sweet maple and smoky-hot chipotle. Frankly, we can’t think of anything it wouldn’t be good on, but we’ll just have to keep trying until we find something.

Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but we love hot food in hot weather. Maybe it’s the searing pain on the palate that makes us forget the oppressive heat of summer. Whatever the case, we need some serious pepper to stand up to the heat wave that’s got us in its grip. The masochists fellas over at The Hot Zone rate this Scotty B’s Devil’s Drool a 9 on heat and 8 on taste, and these guys know from hot stuff. Plus, we just plain like the name.

We’re smack in the middle of the grillingest week of the whole year. Every July 4 weekend, millions of coal jockies put the spurs to burgers, steaks, chicken, you name it. But for those looking for something a little different than A-1 or teriyaki sauce in a bottle, San Francisco chef Scott Youkilis shares a recipe for grilled green onion and tomatillo relish, recently published as part of a roundup of grill-friendly condiments in the San Francisco Chronicle. As Youkilis says, you can’t reinvent a ribeye, but you sure can reinvent steak sauce. Why settle for standard, when you can make a better steak?