Okay, this post is about a week and a half late, but I've been lazy again (that happens a lot). I can't even remember if I mentioned anything about this chili cookoff in my last rambling post. Here's what happened though.
The cookoff was originally scheduled for July 3rd because that was a Wednesday and our normal expat day. I figured that not too many people would show up 2 days in a row, since some of them have to travel quite a distance. As it turned out, not too many people showed up for our normal expat day and a lot of people showed up for our 4th celebration.
I was a bit worried about people showing up because the 4th of July was also the day the President Marcos showed up here in Calbayog. All the streets, except 1 were blocked off downtown. Everyone did not know about the open street, but you could also go on perimeter road around the city to get here. That's what most of them ended up doing. We ended up having approximately 34 people showing up.
For the chili cookoff itself, that was another story. Our first and second place winners from last here were not participating in this contest. The first-place winner was not feeling well and the second- place guy, I guess just didn't feel like participating or didn't have time. So, as usual, we had only 4 participants. Two of us from last year and two new guys that arrived here since our last cookoff.
For my chili this year I decided to go all out. I put in beef (2 different textures) and sausage. I remembered to order my V8 juice so I had that this year, although I think I may have put in too much. One of the concerns I've had in the past with my chili is that I like is spicy. Most people here do not. I had to cut my hot peppers in half, but it was complimented as being of really good heat this year. I also added about 6 mild peppers that we had in the refrigerator. The biggest compliment I got for my chili was someone came up to me and said, "Your chili is the first one, right"? I said, "Yeah, how'd you know"? He said, "Because it is that Texas meaty chili". I'm proud to do a chili that is recognized as a Texas chili.
We ended up having 18 judges (including the 4 cooks). You would think that ever judge would vote for their own chili, but that wasn't the case. In fact, only 1 judge voted for his own. Two of the judges voted for my chili. I was not one of the two that voted for mine because I don't really feel like I should be voting for my own unless I think it is really, far and away, better than the rest. I didn't feel that this time. Anyway, I got 6 of the 18 votes, the winner (who got last place last year) got 8 votes (one of them mine). The other 2 got 2 votes each (but their vote was not one of them).
So that makes 4 chili cookoffs I've been in, and I've done no better than 2nd place. More specifically, I've gotten 2nd place 3 times and 3rd place once. I'm told that the first one might have won, but that was the one I made too spicy for the majority of the judges. I know a couple of things that I did wrong this year (because I did it all in a hurry) and I will correct them for next year.
Okay, that's all I have for now. I hope y'all are having a great day.