Charles and Glenda Ferguson started selling their award-winning Crazy Charlie's Salsa a year ago. Their low-carb blend features Indiana tomatoes and five kinds of peppers. -- Matt Detrich / The Star

Charles and Glenda Ferguson's Crazy Charlie's Salsa is already winning awards, even though they've been selling it commercially for not quite a year.

Last month in Fort Worth, Texas, Crazy Charlie's Salsa, produced by C&G Salsa Co., took home two awards in Chile Pepper magazine's 2004 Fiery Food Challenge -- second place in the salsa, habañero pepper, category and third place in general salsas.

With more than 800 entries in approximately 80 categories in the national competition, the general category with all sorts of fruit and various-ingredient salsas is particularly competitive, according to Denise Mena, senior ad consultant for the magazine.

"It's a very good category to win," she said.

The challenge happened to coincide with the 2003 International Zesty Food Show, where Crazy Charlie's won the people's preference award.

The recognition is welcome encouragement for the Fergusons, who took their booth to the Carmel Farmers' Market this season.

Charles Ferguson said their salsa's three varieties of "heat" have sold well, which has been a surprise. For Hoosiers, the choice is more often the mild or medium, but the community is becoming so diverse that local sales of the hot version are not far behind, Charles Ferguson said. Customers say the salsa is great on fish and a worthy ingredient for meat or stews, he added. "A ton of people use it to baste their chicken."

The Fergusons live on a farm in Noblesville and have been canning their own salsa for about seven or eight years. They prepare up to 140 quarts of salsa a year.

"We couldn't make enough of it," said Charles Ferguson.

Noticing that a lot of the salsas in the marketplace were fairly high in sodium, the Fergusons decided they could produce one that had less sodium and no sweeteners but still tasted good.

They perfected their salsa recipe's flavor and developed a product with mild, medium and hot offerings. The Fergusons' recipe doesn't include added sugars or sweeteners, resulting in a low-carbohydrate product that contains less than 2 net carbs per 1-ounce serving. Its sodium content is 90 milligrams for the same size serving.

"In order to stay with Indiana tomatoes year round, we went with Red Gold tomatoes," said Charles Ferguson, explaining that the acidity in the soil is crucial to the consistent flavor. Other than the tomatoes, the rest of the product is made up of fresh ingredients, including a five-pepper blend that combines habañero, jalapeño, Anaheim, sweet banana and bell peppers.

Charles Ferguson, who described his wife as the farmer of the pair, has turned half of the barn on their property into a warehouse to store some of the 650 peppers they grow.

The future may hold some more heat for the Fergusons if they produce their family-favorite chili sauce and possibly their shrimp sauce.

For now, the salsa is on the shelf at a number of stores around the area, largely health food markets including Georgetown, Nature's Cupboard and Winding Way Farms, and is sold at the LoCarb Marketplace. A 15-ounce jar costs $5.

Bob Landman at Good Earth, 6350 Guilford Ave., also has been stocking the salsa.

"He's not as crazy as you might think," said Landman. "It's the best low-carb salsa we have."

Call Star reporter Patti Denton at 1-317-444-6132.

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