Chili Cookoff

We did the Orlando Chili cookoff this past weekend, and boy was it a big fail!!!

I cooked 10 gallons of my borracho chili, starting on Tuesday when I started cooking the beans.   It took all my free time for the entire week, but I got it all made.  Saturday morning, we got out there an hour or so later than expected and got our booth set up and ready to go.  We were Beauty and the Beans with The Drunken Turkey Chili.

The gates opened at noon, and before 2 p.m., we were out of chili.  Voting finished at 4 p.m. and the awards ceremony was at 5 p.m., so we had to sit around with nothing to offer for 3 hours.  To make matters worse, we had Jade with us.  Luckily, our good friend Amy came out with 2 of her 3 kids and took Jade away for an hour to play in the kids zone.  But, from 9 a.m. until noon, we had to set up our booth, heat up the chili, and prepare for the masses of people with a 2-year-old running around.  Then, at 1:30 p.m., when it was supposed to be nap time, she had to wait until our chili ran out so that I could put her into the stroller and walk her around to get her to nap.  After 15 minutes of walking, she finally fell asleep, only to wake up 40 minutes later.

In total, we got 7 votes for our chili, although tons of people said it was the best they tasted.  Many walked away eating only to turn around to ask what that special spice was that they were tasting, because they had never tasted anything like that before.  We had bunches of people start to walk by, here it was turkey, and grab a sample, all excited.  But, we only got 7 votes.

So, come 5 p.m., we knew we weren’t going to win the $500, but thought we might have a good chance for a trophy, since our chili was the most flavorful there.  But, after waiting through every single award, they got to the open category, and we were not a winner.

So, I’m pretty confident we won’t be doing that again.  1000 lucky people got to taste my chili.  But, if we’re lucky, next year we’ll have a 3 or 4 month old, and I will not be in the mood to sit out in the dust bowl chasing around a 3-year-old while trying to serve my chili to a bunch of people who won’t vote for me anyway.

Am I bitter?  A little.  I think I’m more just worn out from the experience.  I need a few days to put it behind me and then I might feel better about it.  Until then, I’m going to sound like the sore loser.  And, that’s OK with me.