Happy New Year!

I hope you and yours enjoyed a happy holiday season whether it was spent celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah or Festivus (for the rest of us)!

The New Year arrived with presence here in Winnipeg. My family and I were out on Saturday evening when it started to snow…heavily. It was gorgeous. We drove through the downtown streets as the city lights shone through a thick, misty atmosphere filled with snow. It seemed everywhere we looked was a scene from a postcard. By morning we had accumulated some 24 - 30 cm of snow! New Years Day was brilliantly sunny with everything covered in a thick blanket of pure white snow.

Onto HP Sauce news:

Our beloved HP Sauce made its appearance at the table on a couple of occasions during the holidays. Perhaps I’ve been advocating the brown stuff for long enough now that it has become second nature to see it not only on our table, but on the tables of extended family as well. My reputation precedes me! On Christmas morning we debated on what should come first, the opening of the gifts or breakfast consisting of bacon, egg & tomato sarnies drenched in HP Sauce! As my son went for the tree, I went to the kitchen to cook up some bacon. Suffice it to say however, the gifts won out - though I did manage to get a jump start on that bacon!

I have two contributions to pass along this week. The first contribution celebrates the potential of HP Sauce’s future while the second highlights a slightly more controversial present.

The first comes to us from a new site contributor who has sent in some fantastic scans from his own private collection which I am delighted to share with you. The first scan I’ll highlight is this one from 1985 when Birmingham bid for the Olympics in 1992.

Birmingham Olympics 1992
Contributor: Droglite

The attached is a cartoon by the famous, but sadly now deceased UK cartoonist, Larry who was an HP Sauce aficionado. He was friend of mine who had many cartoons published in ‘Punch’ mag. and even appeared on a set of UK postage stamps. - Droglite

This is a fantastic sketch and one that I had not seen before. Many thanks to Droglite for sharing it with us! It will fit very nicely in the archives.

HP Tangy American Sauce
Contributor: Mandy

The second contributed item comes to us from our friend Mandy.

Mandy, who is now well known for her ‘Saucy Girl‘ contributions, is also passionate about the preservation of HP Sauce and its historical place in Birmingham’s history. This picture comes to us out of concern for where the HP Sauce brand itself is headed. Personally, I have never laid eyes on this seemingly new “Tangy American Sauce” variety though I have written previously about the “Sauces of the World” varieties to which this one falls under. What puzzles me is that to my knowledge it is not sold in either Canada or the United States. Where is this sauce being marketed? It would make sense to me that it be marketed to Americans who may have aversions to accepting a purely British sauce (from a marketing standpoint anyways). What are your thoughts on HP marketing a “Tangy American Sauce”? If you have more information about this particular variety, please let me know. I am also curious as to its taste. Would this sauce be comparable to the American A1 sauce? As always, I’d love to hear your feedback.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 02nd, 2007 at 9:44am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.