Everyone has their own type of adventure. Some go mountain climbing, white-water rafting, skydiving, whatever. For me, it turns out that it’s taking my boys (ages 2 and 5) down to the North Market for the Grillmasters Festival 2008 and hoping that things will not go awry. This was not our first foray to the Grillmasters Festival with the kiddies. We went last year, and you can see that post HERE. That trip, though, was a little easier since we had both Linda and myself there to help deal with the little ones.

This year, Linda’s out of town on vacation for a few days…so I was on my own.

Knowing that my time was as limited as the patience and endurance of a pair of toddlers, I packed up my camera, some extra diapers and snacks, and headed downtown to see how the Festival was shaping up for this year. I arrived just in time to see roughly half of the Amateur BBQ sauce contest. Above you can see the motley crew of judges, Chuck Evans, CaJohn, Anthony Frazier (of Urban Chefs), earnestly going about the task of selecting a trio of winning BBQ sauces from the dozen or so submitted.

The tasting row of amateur BBQ sauces after the judging. I know which numbers were the winners, but didn’t take note of to whom they each belonged. All of them were decent, but there were a few that were a little too sweet for me.

Much of the two hours or so that I was there was spent around the cooking demo tent where CaJohn and crew had their grilling schwerve on. Jason, the emcee, assured me that that hot sauce bottle shirt is indeed the only shirt he actually owns.

Chef Steve goes hog wild there on the grill getting the grilled veggies all spiced up for their culinary creation, this time a chicken soup/stew of sorts. I’m hoping that CaJohn will make that recipe available.

Another view of the grill in action. The only thing I couldn’t figure out is why my grill never looks that good when I load it with grilled veggies???

Here CaJohn is in charge of getting the grilled chicken done for the stew. Notice the grilled tomatoes there. There’s a trick to grilling those so they don’t turn into mush, and I haven’t mastered that yet myself.

Gratuitous picture of the fixins used in the cooking demo. Not much to say about it except that CaJohn used some of his own products as well as a variety of products from the retailers of the North Market.

The finished product, a caldo de pollo which looked amazingly good. Grilled veggies make nearly every dish something better, even soups & stews.

Chuck Evans and Montezuma Brand were in attendance, as always. Got the latest update on the Trademark Infringement issue, which is still ongoing.

One of our new favorites in this area is Buckeye Mustard, who has a mustard and wing sauce which are absolutely heavenly. Stay tuned for those reviews coming up in the next few weeks.

In all simplicity, this day was all about keeping the kids happy. Lots of chips, soda, and even a trip to Jeni’s Ice Creams was all they needed to keep them living large for a couple of hours. Actually, I think Josh may have ended up wearing more of his dark cocoa gelato than he actually ate, but happiness can be all about those first few bites anyway.

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