First What and Who: Chili and John

Normally these wouldn't be combined like this, but these go together...

The 3rd Annual Queens County Chili Cook-Off Challenge and Pig Fest (which I will call ‘the cook-off’ for short to make typing this post easier) was/is, in my eyes, a glorious celebration of chili.

It is a cool concept and was really fun. Basically, people went to the cook-off, bringing chili with them, if they so desired. Liz and I so desired, so we practiced over the course of the last few weeks, never quite happy with what we produced. We modified our recipe and cooked our chili the night before the cook-off and took it along. Happily, we liked how our chili turned out.

Once a competitor arrived at the cook-off their chili was taken to the kitchen and randomly assigned a number. The random assignment was done through drawing from a hat – our number was 3. Once all the chilis had arrived, the tasting began. Someone manned the kitchen, dishing out chili into tasting cups that were delivered to the waiting “judges”, around 20 – 25 people. Once the chili was delivered, we all scored the chili from 1 - 10 on 5 categories: aroma, color, consistency, taste & aftertaste.

14 chilis were served over the course of around 3 – 4 hours, with the only break coming for a “Chili Dog Intermission” (that’s where the “Pig Fest” comes in to the name, even though they were beef dogs). Yep – we took a break from eating chili to eat chili on hot dogs. Ingenious thinking that worked awesomely. Right now, I really want a chili dog.

After the 14 chilis were all sampled (I only sampled 12 of them), the score sheets were taken away and analyzed, computated, added, averaged, and perhaps manipulated in a multitude more ways mathematically and a winner announced. The winner this year was a deserved one: a chili made using ground (minced) meat, roast and also chorizo sausage. The chili that Liz and I made finished somewhere around the middle of the pack. I, personally, was just glad that we beat out the last placed finisher, who just bought canned chili and heated it. It says something very accurate about chili when the canned product is viewed least favorably.

In the end chili was the big winner (but not if you are Hormel, who apparently don’t make good canned chili), and everyone who competed got a t-shirt. The winner got a special t-shirt that had “Champion” on the back. One day, I hope to wear that shirt… perhaps a more Australian chili would stand out from the crowd and give me that edge… but what to add? Vegemite? Tim Tams? Wallaby? I think Emu could be a winner.

After the cook-off we played charades. I successfully guessed that a member of my team was acting out “Gross Domestic Product”. Hells yeah!

But who would come up with such an incredible idea for a way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening? Who would devise the idea to have a chili dog intermission? Who indeed…

That would be John – brain child and host of the cook-off, beer and chili aficionado, charades prodigy. Don’t play Cranium with he and Erin – they have read all the cards, sculpted all the sculptorades, and can roll purple at will, none of which makes sense if you haven’t played Cranium. Perhaps that’s just me being bitter because Liz and I have never beaten them. I don’t think John reads the cards, but Erin (his girlfriend) may. He comes from a strong charades playing family, and can very quickly let you know that it is a movie with 3 words and that the first word has 2 syllables.

When John isn’t working or planning chili cook-offs he bowls, watches InsightExpress (the company Erin and I work for) play softball, plays games, including washers, watches football and a whole host of other stuff.

Importantly, John drives a Subaru. Below are Liz, myself, John and Erin modelling the cook-off t-shirts.