Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Feeling Better

Last week I finally started to feel good again. Hopefully over most of the virus stuff but still find that I need a little more sleep than I used to get to keep up with everything.

Have sauce cooking now, need to get 24 briskets sliced, and then need to get to Newton, KS to pickup 2 tons of pellets. All that while getting ready for the catering on Wednesday and for the contest this weekend.

Next Contest - St Joseph, MO

This coming weekend we will be traveling to St Jo, MO for their Apple Blossom BBQ Contest. We are looking forward to it and it is actually only 2 miles further than Sugar Creek, even though it is further north of KC.

Sugar Creek, MO Contest

Last weekend we traveled to Sugar Creek, MO (part of Kansas City, MO) with 50 other teams for their 6th annual contest.

I knew that I could not leave the restaurant till about 1:00, but it ended up being 2:00 pm before I got out of town. Then with the tremendous wind blowing out of the South, I had to slow down to at least the posted speed on I70. Then of course I hit Friday rush hour traffic on the toll road at Topeka, and then traffic backup on the east side of KC and traffic back up for the Royals game. With all of that I did not pull into the contest site until 6:45.

I do appreciate the event staff at Sugar Creek. I told them I would be late getting in and they were ready for me. I was parked, had meat inspected and meat prep started by 7:00 pm. I asked Doug about getting boxes and away he went on the golf cart and came back with my boxes for me. What a great job Doug did!

The main thing I do not like about getting into a contest that late is not being able to visit with all of our BBQ buddies. When I go east to contests, I don't know as many of the teams so I like to have a little time to visit and meet some new BBQ Friends, just don't have enough time to get that done when we get there that late.

I did enjoy Don and Sharron Will of Smokers Wild coming over on Saturday morning. They weren't cooking anywhere so they just came to hang out and help out.

Thanks to Brent Wilson for running boxes for me. Brent is a great kid, well adult now, and I appreciate his efforts because that was a steep hill up to the turn in area.

We placed 9th in Chicken, 15th in Ribs, 1st in Pork, 2nd in Brisket, and 3rd Overall and a 5th place in dessert. Out of 6 contests so far this year we have 1 reserve and 3 - 3rd place finishes.

Congrats to Rod and Sherry of Pellet Envy who were Grand Champions and All American BBQ as Reserve Champions.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Down and Out

Well I know it has been a while since I have blogged but I do have a good excuse (at least in my own mind).

We got back from the contest in Rio Rancho last Sunday washed the trailer out, prepped briskets, and over-slept the alarm by 3 hours to load briskets in the cooker Sunday night. Over-slept to get briskets out on Monday morning and then could do nothing but sleep most of Monday last week. Have slept more this last week than I have in years and still keep feeling like, crap.

We had the Country Smoker Grill Class to do last Saturday, so we worked on getting that class over so really did not get much rest. Felt pretty good the day of the class, but was just wiped out on Sunday.

The kids have had mono now for about 3 weeks so I just assume that it is my turn to have it as well. I have not gone to the doctor and am not going to spend $500 for them to tell me to stay home, sleep and drink plenty of fluids. First I don't have time to stay home and second, I don't want to spend $500 for that!

So anyway, I hope to be able to update everyone on Rio Rancho and the Cooking Class as the week goes by and before we head to the Osage City contest this weekend.

Kelly