Hi! I'm Erik.
I'm the Sorry Sauce Sauceror
aka Twitchin' Kitchen Magician
aka Twitchin' Kitchen Magician
After years of playing in punk rock bands and living in cities near venues, in 2014 I found myself married and living in the Burlington suburbs. I thought backyard gardening would be a relaxing hobby that paid off with free food. Unfortunately, we had a family of raccoons living there also and they destroyed everything except for a ghost pepper that I was growing as a fun novelty.
I made a hot sauce with it and brought it to work. The bottle passed around from table to table until one guy came over and asked for more. It was a 23 bottle batch, and it was gone in 2 days.
I was hooked, so I started ordering pepper seeds from around the world and trying new recipes. We didn't have much space so I grew in buckets around a swimming pool.
In 2017, we left Burlington and moved to the Hamlet of Lebanon within Mapleton Township. I was hoping to get a few acres of land, but we found a church from 1888 with 3/4 of an acre that was just too cool to turn down, so here we are!
In 2020, the Pandemic shut down my main job so I jumped into Sorry Sauce full time. The Garden of Apologies also jumped from 500 plants in 2020 to 1100 in 2021 and 1700 for 2022. I added the Greenhouse of Extreme Regret in March 2021 and we're up to 6 freezers inside.
2023 added the Greenhouse of Extremer Regret and an extra plot of regenerative farmland in Rockwood.
As a cool bonus, I've grown peppers for League of Fire and Extreme Chile Alliance belt matches.
I have a bunch of recurring recipes that I have in stock almost all of the time, but the real fun comes with crafting new and unusual hot sauces. Everyone makes a mango hot sauce, but who else makes a sauce with pawpaw or kohlrabi? I grow rare peppers, so I can make unique sauces that you can't get anywhere else.
It's been a whole lotta fun, and I've won a few awards along the way.
Please watch our social media feeds to see what we're working on and what new concoctions we have comin' up! The only thing you can expect is quality!
Meet the rest of the team. Here's Marbles. He was the original greenhouse cat and our official brand mascot.
Meet the rest of the team. Here's Nina aka Nine Spice.
In December 2021, I did an interview with Curtis at the Wellington Advertiser. There was a slight miscommunication as I'm still very much an active musician, but it was a great article nonetheless.
In September 2020, I did an interview with Colin at the Listowel Banner. The article was picked up by a few rural papers across the country, so although the original article is behind a login wall, here's a free copy from syndication.
Colin Burrowes moved on from the Listowel Banner and created his own site. Here's the first installment of our seed to bottle journey with a Dragon's Breath pepper from March 2022.
Marshall Ward is cohost of Bonn Park Podcast and a reporter for the Waterloo Record. Here's a feature he did on Shacklands Beerbecue.
In October 2022, I did an interview with Keegan from the Elora Fergus Today. We spoke about Sorry Sauce and the Garden of Apologies. Technically, the Garden was past frost and done for the season, but he took some nice photos in the Greenhouse of Extreme Regret.
In October 2023, I was featured on Made Right Here through CTV Kitchener.
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