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Sunday was Steinbeck’s Second Annual Chili Cookoff and I was up at 6AM cooking beans and flame roasting peppers to get ready for the competition.  Set up at Steinbeck’s was at 9:30 and, at about 9:00, I started to wonder how I got myself roped into doing things like this all the time.  I was worried that maybe I wasn’t making enough chili.  I was worried that my chili was going to be too spicy.  I had thrown in eight habanero peppers that I had grown in the garden this year.  The peppers were, in fact, my main motivation for entering the competition.  Ever since I harvested the first peppers in mid-summer, I’ve been making spicy habanero chili.

I got to Steinbeck’s a little bit before 9:30 and a number of people were already there and setting up.  Most of the people seemed to have a lot more equipment than I did.  They had giant propane burners and lots of ingredients.  My chili was almost done by that point.  The beans, tomatoes, and peppers were all in the pot already.  The only thing left to go in was the ground beef which had to be cooked on the premises.  The chef who was running the competition went around and checked the temperature of everyone’s meat.  I was just at 40 degrees, so my meat was deemed barely acceptable.  I then went about cooking it on my little camp stove.  It didn’t make a big flame, but it seemed perfectly suitable for what I was doing.  I finished cooking the meat at a little after 10:00.  At that point, I sat my pot of chili on the burner and let it simmer until 12:30 when thy started letting people in to taste.  For the next two hours, I sat around and talked while the other entrants worked busily preparing their chili.

The event itself turned out to be a nice little neighborhood event.  I got to serve my chili to over 200 people who paid $5 to come in and taste 20 different chilis and cast their vote for the best one.  There was a panel of judges who selected a winner, but there was also a People’s Choice award for the chili receiving the most votes from those attending.  The judge testing was a blind test, but for People’s Choice, I had to pitch my chili.  I mentioned the homegrown peppers and that I had been up in the morning smoking them.  I also let everyone know that my chili had a kick.  I saw people that I knew from the neighborhood and a lot of new faces.  I told everyone to remember table 14.

Later in the afternoon, people started coming to the table saying, “I heard this is where to come to get some spicy chili.”  Word was apparently getting around.  Many said that it was the first “real chili” they had tried at the event.  The others were too mild.  One guy told me that mine was definitely at the top of his list.  He had a friend coming and he hoped that his friend would get there before I ran out.  At 2:30, I filled a cup for the judges.  The cup was marked with a letter that was unknown to me.  Susannah and Damian were at the competition and they went around to evaluate the competition.  Not many were very memorable they said.  The ones that were were memorably bad, including three that tasted burnt.  At 3:30, we ran out of chili and it seemed that many of the entrants had already run out.  A few minutes later, another guy came back.  He had to try the chili one last time.  He said it was between mine and another one.  I told him that we had run out, but that he was welcome to scrape the bottom of the pot with his spoon, which he did.  He decided.  Mine was the best.

At 4:00, they began announcing the awards.  The judges awards were given out first.  All winners were given a “chili survival kit” that featured toilet paper, tums, and the like.  The second place winner also got a case of beer.  The first place winner got $300 cash handed to them.  My chili didn’t earn anything in the judges round.  The People’s Choice awards were announced next and the prizes were the same.  As they were getting ready to announce, one woman turned around and told me that my chili should win the prize.  Alas, I didn’t win any of the People’s Choice awards either.

As I was leaving the competition, I was wondering if I should have toned down the spice a bit to give the chili a wider appeal, but I rejected that idea pretty quickly.  I had made pretty much exactly the chili that I had wanted to make and there were clearly a number of people who really liked it.  It was spicy chili for people who like spicy chili and it seemed like my chili was stand out in that crowd.  I made my chili for the guy who hoped there was some left when his buddy arrived and the guy who came back to scrape the bottom of the pot.  By that measure, my chili was a complete success.