For six out of the past seven years, we have hosted our very own chili cookoff. An event that started out as our own birthday party where we could show off our chili-making talent and have our friends judge them for us has turned into our one annual shindig where we can invite the chili cooks amongst us to come and present their wares in true cookoff fashion. This is the first year we’ve cranked up the chili machine here in Ohio, so we got off to a bit of a slow start. Our table of chili entries looked like this:

In years past, we have usually had about a dozen entries for judging…but even with our own concoctions added, the field of contestants was a small bunch. From a logistics standpoint, it actually turned out for the better this year. The threat of inclement weather this past weekend forced us to bring all the tables inside rather than try to squeeze them out onto the deck, and that made it easier to have them all in a more compact place and easily plugged in. Besides us, the contestants for this year’s trophy & prizes included Joe’s cousin, Leslie Z., Joe’s best friend from med school, Tiffany L., and our hometown hot sauce hero, CaJohn.

Now this was the coolest thing about the whole day for Joe. Joe’s chili gift from Tiffany was this totally bitchin’ new apron in which to do all his future chili cooking. “Semper infernus uranus” pretty much sums up Joe’s chili-creating mantra anyway.

Every chili cookoff at our house requires a little something sweet to have after consuming mass quantities of chili. This cake from our local Sam’s Club looks pretty good, huh? Next year, we’ll definitely need more people to help us eat it, though.

After all the votes were counted, Leslie (seen above) was our grand prize champion, just edging out CaJohn for this year’s title. Leslie had no idea we would be giving out a tropy and had apparently not had much experience with chili, so the victory was that much sweeter for her. Hopefully, she’ll come back again when we do this in 2007 to defend her title.

Despite the smallish crowd, a fun time was had by all. Next year’s event will certainly start to be planned as soon as the calendar turns to 2007!!!

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