We love this competition, but the season was getting long for us.  We were pretty spent so we decided to compete in NEBS grilling, but not KCBS. We judged the KCBS contest which was very interesting for me since it was the first one I've judged since getting my certificate. I was really underwhelmed by the entries at my table.  I had some long-time judges at my table, and they thought the same so it was just a lack-luster performance.  It was cold and rainy on Sunday which could have had an impact.  BBQ is better in the sunshine.  We look forward to more chances to judge. 

Our wings and dessert made the top 10, and our bacon-wrapped scallops came in 2nd place!

This was our first time competing in the Otter River Tailgate.  It was a lovely competition, and we look forward to doing it again.

This was David's Kids Q chicken entry.  He made the recipe up himself.  The secret ingredient in the glaze was Swedish Fish!  No kidding!  They came in 2nd place!

Brookline Fire Department's annual Tailgate is our favorite competition of the year.  The people are so nice!  The location is pretty close to home,; and the pace is relaxed.  I had to miss it because of a family reunion, but it didn't seem right for the team to skip it so Chuck and Cris represented.  This is usually where David competes in a Kids Q, but he is also away.

No photos to share, but the categories were pizza, beef, mystery box, dessert, wings and ribs.  Our scores were about average.  

Over the weekend of June 24-26, The Pit Fiends headed up to Waterbury VT to participate in the second Green Mountain BBQ and Music Festival.  Needless to say, we were not there to sing.

Our adventures started on the way up as we were reminiscing about how last year on our way to Maine, we blew out TWO tires on our old Suburban when we blew out another!  We decided to play it cautious and take it to a tire shop and get the two older tires replaced.  As we were changing the flat, Cris needed the rubber mallet to help remove the lug nuts.  Where was it?  In the roof top carrier.  Where were the keys?  Back at home.  After we were finished at the tire store, we headed over to a locksmith in Littleton, NH (The only one open for about 100 miles!) to get a new key.

About 3 hours late, but before dark, we arrived to meet Chuck and set up our site.  The event was wonderfully run by super nice people, and the weather was pretty close to perfect.

Saturday was a typical NEBS grilling contest.  The categories were Stuffed Fatty, Pizza, Fajitas/Tacos, and a Mystery Box.  There were also three people's choice competitions: BBQ sauce, hot sauce and pulled pork.

A BBQ Fatty is defined as "sausage, stuffed or otherwise, formed into a loaf and smoked."  We wrapped home-made garlic sausage around a jalapeno stuffed with three Mexican cheeses and corn, wrapped the whole thing in bacon and smoked over peach wood.

I thought it was under-flavored.  Maybe the sausage needed more salt.  It received a near perfect appearance score, and was just 10 points below the category winner.

Chuck got a new pizza rig for his Weber grill.  Its sweet and greatly improved our cook time and appearance.  We actually had time to make one pizza, completely flub it, and make another. 

The category stipulated that the pizza have at least one meat.  Our pizza had both hot and mild Italian sausage and was topped with some fresh basil.  It also received near perfect appearance scores and near perfect taste scores as well.  It came in 4th place! and was a mere 0.02 points away from money and third place.

The next category was fajitas/tacos.  They needed to contain a meat and at least two veg.  We presented a classic carnitas pork topped with roasted red peppers and a cabbage slaw which was dressed with a lime sour cream on a flour tortilla.

I could eat this taco all day.  Again we got near perfect appearance scores.  This is a big deal for us.  Appearance has been hard for us for a long time.  We got a top 10 shout out at 8th place! and were a mere 0.9 points away from the leader.

The last category was a Mystery Box.  It contained portobello mushrooms, romaine, bread crumbs, onion, garlic and a sweet pepper.  We were allowed to add a frozen veg, a canned meat, a spice rub and a sauce.

We made a stuffed mushroom, sauteing the onion, garlic and pepper and adding frozen corn and breadcrumbs and one of our spice mixtures.  We topped it with some grilled romaine and a lemon olio sauce.  I've never cooked a whole portobello mushroom cap, and I suspect it was over cooked.  We didn't have enough for us to taste.  It was a challenge, and we had fun although we didn't perform well with the judges.

Overall, we came in 8th place which was super great!  It's always wonderful to have a top ten finish.

In addition to the grilling contest, there were three People's Choice contests on Saturday: BBQ Sauce, Hot Sauce and pulled pork.  We entered all three.  

The pulled pork was served at our tent which is a great way for us to interact with visitors to the event.  We received lots of compliments, received a few votes and had a great time.

For the sauce competitions they held elimination rounds with volunteer tasters.  Groups of six tasters per group sampled six sauces.  The top rated sauces moved on to the next round, and so on until they had one table and 6 finalist sauces. The top three received ribbons.

Chuck entered a basic BBQ sauce, and I entered my Asian-style hot sauce. We knew we were competing against sauce vendors so we didn't think much about it. In fact, I only brought enough of my sauce for the competition.  Our hot sauce came in 1st place!  I'm still riding high on that ribbon.  People kept coming to our tent asking for tastes of it, and I didn't have any!  I can't wait to make up a new batch as soon as the jalapenos ripen.  

As usual, our KCBS food didn't perform well. Here are the photos.  Out of 24 judges who saw these boxes, only 4 rated a box as a 9 in appearance, meaning, "Wow, that is something I can't wait to taste." Three were in ribs and one in brisket. However, all of them were things we would be happy to serve to anyone who comes to our house.

The last category of the day was a rare one called Anything But Dessert.  It's not common in New England, and I guess the serious participants don't waste their time on it.  Out of 40 teams that competed in the KCBS categories, only 11 entered the Anything But category.  We made shrimp, but some of the pieces were slightly under-cooked so it only placed 8th.  It was definitely difficult to stay charged so late in the weekend.

We had the chance to sell our competition leftovers which was fun.  It was a great opportunity to talk to visitors about the hobby we love and share our food. We look forward to next year in VT.

I took the class to become a certified barbeque judge, and here is my badge!  Now the whole team is certified to judge.

Harvard Fall Festival
Harvard MA
September 12-13, 2015

Trebuchets and barbecue, what could be better?

The grilling categories today were boneless chicken, shrimp, fatties and dessert.  When turning in the chicken, we took a wrong turn and got in late - our first DQ!  Oh well, it happens to some of the best, and now it's happened to us.  If you turn in your box late, it can't be judged so that ruined any chance of getting a good overall score today.  The chicken was juicy, too.  Cris is so good at shrimp.  It came in 8th place.  I thought the fatties were delicious.  I stuffed jalapenos with cheese and wrapped them in sausage and wrapped that in bacon and smoked the works.  They have become our new favorite appetizer when friends come over.  We also made smores cheese cakes that were pretty and delicious!

If you've never visited us while we're competing, I invite you to do so.  Here is what it looks like.  Sleeping tent in the background, shade tent and smokers.  To the right, out of the picture, is our prep tent and tables.

We've taken to playing a new game while we work called YouTube Roulette. One of us picks a song, and we play it on YouTube.  Then we have to pick a song that gets listed in the suggestions below the video.  It's amazing what paths that can take you down!

We thought we handed in some pretty good stuff for KCBS this time, but the judges didn't agree.  We're determined to judge a few times next year to get a better sense of what other competitors are putting out as products because we're stymied as to how to get over this bump.

The season ended on a high note:  look what we brought home!  The Pit Fiends were 3rd Place Tailgating Team of the Year!  I couldn't believe it.  We are very proud and are determined to uphold this or better for next year, too!

Sam's Club National BBQ Tour
Scarborough ME
August 15, 2015

Back to back competitions are difficult for us.  All three of us have jobs, and our two kids are at all kinds of summer camps which require constant changes in driving schedules.  We persevered and gave this our best shot, but had some major snafus.

Even when buying your meat from a great distributor and taking every care with food storage, something can go wrong.  We opened our rib cryovac pack on Friday night, and the ribs had gone bad.  Thank goodness for a grocer near the competition site that opened at 7pm on Saturdays.  Cris and Chuck rushed over there (after a donut run) to get new ribs.  That set our timing off, and sometimes that's all it takes.  We really didn't do well today.

On the bright side, and I try hard to always find the bright side, we found a great restaurant called Chicago Dogs.   
http://chicagodogsofmaine.com/  
They even make their own neon green relish.  These were awesome!

Krazy Days
Middleborough MA
August 8, 2015

Chuck and Cris went down for this event again and this time participated in the people's choice where Chuck's wings came in 2nd place!  

Brookline Tailgate
Brookline NH
July 18-19, 2015

The song goes, "Some days are diamonds.  Some days are stone."  This was a stone day.  We couldn't catch much of a break in the grilling competition today.  Cris carried the team with his coconut shrimp which came in 5th place!  We burnt the pizza.  I moved away from the blue cheese and browned butter, and topped my steaks with an olive compound butter instead.  It was very poorly received.  One thing I've heard from other competitors is that judges can sometimes balk at meat that isn't well done.  BBQ judges are used to meat cooked a long time, so it is always presented fully cooked.  I've been turning in medium rare steaks, which are perfect from my perspective (and that of my 7 year old daughter), but the judges aren't liking it.  2016 will be the year of the well-done steak, I guess.  Our desserts were cheese cake tartlets.  Chuck got a near perfect score on appearance, but 2 out of the 6 judges found the flavor only mediocre.  The other 4 loved it, but averages can suck.

One of the people's choice categories was fascinating this year.  It was a mystery category.  The meat turned out to be a whole turkey!  We were given a basket with these ingredients: Craisins, Shock Top beer, mint vinegar, pepper oil and Swedish Fish!  We cooked the beer, craisins, candy and vinegar down to make a glaze and coated the turkey with the oil to help browning.  The oil and vinegar where the hardest ingredients as they both had a weird, funky, flavor.  I think we put in a good product anyway. 

This was David's second Kids Q.  He replicated his lamb burgers, but mixed some ground bacon into the burger to help keep it juicy and topped it with feta cheese.  They certainly were more juicy, but they didn't do as well.  He came in 6th this time which really bummed him out.  The comment was that the judges couldn't identify what kind of meat it was so I guess the bacon wasn't a great idea because it detracted from the lamb too much. He did make friends with a fellow competitor and they bummed around together most of the weekend, and that is the real point of BBQ.

I thought our wings and ribs were smashing, but the judges really disagreed.  Sometimes I just don't get what they're looking for.  I taste our competitors, and I think we stand up to their product, and yet we fared worse.  Well, no where to go but up.

We're still learning how to make the best bbq box garnish.  We don't care for the parsley putting green, and discovered this method with green leaf lettuce.  Here's a link YouTube video by Redneck Scientific demonstrating how to make this box.  You'll note his looks a lot better than mine.

Monadnock Up In Smoke
Swanzey NH
May 29-31, 2015

This was our first time to this great event.  It was a lot of fun, and the organizers work hard to make it fun.

Cris and Chuck took time out of cooking to do a cooking demonstration.  They demonstrated how to cook my perfect-on-the-grill steak with the blue cheese and brown butter.  People loved it.  We also took the time to do a little shopping.  We bought a set of knives with our logo on it!

In the grilling contest the categories were wings, mystery meat, steak and dessert.  The mystery meat was alligator, and Cris made Moroccan-flavored tacos.  They were really tasty.  Alligator is tricky because it is very lean.  Cris slightly over cooked them, and they were a tad dry.  The word on the street was that just about everyone turned in alligator that was dry.  I made my brown-butter steak and for dessert Chuck made smores cheesecakes.  We got three shout outs!  The dessert came in 10th, and the steak and alligator came in 7th.

We're also sporting out new aprons made for us by Katrina of Post Oak Aprons!

We are improving, but slowly in the KCBS competitions.  Our chicken came in 15th out of 49 which is solid.