A New Adventure

We heard about a chili cook-off a few hours north. Chris likes my chili so much that he thought I should compete. We decided to make a weekend getaway of it.

A few days before the competition, we secured our ingredients.  We ended up with different tomatoes than I usually do and Extra Stout Guinness instead of the regular. I was unsure how the changes might affect the chili, but I was happy we had picked fresh jalapenos from our trip to the farm.

The rules said I needed to have at least two gallons of chili. I have never really measured how much chili I make with a batch. I attempted to guestimate how much I needed to adjust the recipe to make that much, based on the size of the pot I usually use. I decided to multiply the recipe by five to be on the safe side.

Cooking in Bulk

Cooking the chili turned out to be quite the undertaking. The most challenging part was browning ten pounds of hamburger. I did it in two batches in a giant pan. I picked a huge pot, but I realized it was not big enough after adding all the ingredients. Luckily, we had another, even larger pot that held everything. Cooking such a large batch of chili took much longer than I anticipated.

The extra stout beer, or maybe the longer cook time, made the chili more bitter than usual. We added some sugar, which fixed the problem. The chili was good but did not have the same flavor as my regular recipe. At this point, we could do nothing to change it, so we decided to move forward and enjoy the experience.

In the morning, we packed up the chili and the extras we planned for toppings and headed to the Suwannee River. Traffic was abysmal, with super slow going for a large chunk of the trip, adding an extra hour to our travel time.

Once we finished the trip, we found ourselves at a lovely campground on the river. We had an early morning planned, so we put the chili in crockpots to heat overnight and went to bed.

We woke early, so we had time for a leisurely, relaxing cup of coffee before heading to the cook-off. The weather forecast told us it would be cooler weather for the weekend. I was happy we had packed some warm clothes because it turned out to be cold, wet, and dreary, much colder than what had been forecast. Chris happily wore his Care Bear suit that he had bought for the festival. Maybe he would win the award for best costume.

The Chili Cook-Off

Once we arrived at the American Legion, we quickly set up. Our canopy had a bent leg, so we had to get creative while setting it up.  We were happy to have the sides for the canopy to protect us a little from the wind. The only other glitch we had was power. Two crockpots going on high was more than our EcoFlow River was set up for, draining it after about 20 minutes. We had the solar panel but, with no sun, it couldn’t keep up. We had access to a more heavy-duty solar-powered generator, which kept us going throughout the competition.

We were all set up with our two crockpots and all the fixings ready to go. I took a few minutes to walk around the car show before the cook-off started. There were a lot of great cars to see. Of course, my favorite was a little red corvette. It was gorgeous!

We were in the second row of booths, right in front of the band. It was a great spot. We served little cups of chili while we danced the day away. Being my first competition and not the most confident person in the kitchen, I was more than a little nervous about what people would think of my chili. One person commented that it didn’t have enough heat, which didn’t offend me as that was on purpose.  Most people gave us compliments on our chili.

As much as we encouraged people to use the toppings, the majority only wanted to taste the chili itself. I was a little dismayed by this because the extras toppings are part of my chili recipe. Of those who did get toppings, very few opted for the cilantro, which makes my chili. Everyone who ate the chili the way we suggested raved about how good it was. Our neighbor competitor even sent all his people over to taste it. Several people come back for seconds.

When they announced the winners, I was not on the list. I won’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed, but the competition was a lot of fun, and I had a lot of good feedback, so I was happy with that. We even ran into someone who said they voted for our chili for the people’s choice award.

It was a great learning experience. The next time we do something like that, I will stick with my usual tried and true ingredients. Instead of making one massive batch of chili, I will make individual ones and then combine them. I will probably amp up the heat as well, as the small portion for the tasting does not allow for the heat to build as it would when eating a bowl of my chili.  Finally, I will add the cilantro to the chili pot as an ingredient right before serving it instead of offering it as a topping.

When we got back to the campground, we were both exhausted and ready for a nap. We set the alarm because we had ordered dinner from the resort restaurant and didn’t want to miss it. With the rest and the best chicken cordon bleu I have ever eaten, we felt recharged and were ready to have some fun.

Date Night

We decided to check out the DJ at the clubhouse. Not only did he play music, but he was a performer as well. It was a nice mixture of recorded and live music. They had a prom-night theme going on. While it was nice to see everyone dressed up, more people than we were comfortable with were inside the bar.

We slipped into another room where we could still hear the music, but without the crowd. There we found a pool table and played to our heart’s content. It felt like we were out on an actual date. While we played pool, we met Don, who joined us for some games of cutthroat, which was a new game to me. He invited us to karaoke the next night.

Sunday proved to be even worse weather than Saturday had been. It was even colder and rained most of the day. We ordered a fabulous breakfast from the restaurant and then hung out at the campsite all day. It was entertaining to see all the bunnies running around the campground. We went to karaoke, which ended up being at someone’s house. While it was a little odd at first, we ended up having a lot of fun. Grilled ribs and Hawaiian macaroni salad made for a delicious dinner.

We slept soundly before a much less stressful drive home in the morning. While we served a lot of chili, we hadn’t eaten any ourselves. We had some for lunch and then froze the rest. We won’t need to make any chili for quite some time.