First let me start by apologizing for not having a title for yesterday's post. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I know I had one typed, then erased it. Then I must have never typed a new one. Now for today's post...
For the past few years our new church has hosted a bar-b-que cook-off contest through the Kansas City Bar-b-que Society. Its kind of a big deal with lots of teams (34 this year) from all over the place that come to compete for cash prizes. There are certified bar-b-que judges and four categories, chicken, ribs, pork, and brisket. Each year a select few Crosspoint folks get to judge with the professionals, and guess who got to be one of the luck few this year.... ME!!!
When I first met Pastor Doug, the small group pastor, he was telling me about this contest and jokingly I asked what one has to do to become a judge. I do love me some bar-b-que! Well, once we decided to move, he tried to pull some strings but there wasn't any openings. However, more teams signed up and they need a few more judges. Due to some gracious folks at the church I was in! For the past week I've been looking forward to today!
We started with the chicken and out of the six samples, one was great, three were good, and two were trash. I say trash because after you take the bite to judge, and I do mean bite after all you have to eat 24 bites total at least, than whatever is left, you can take home. I will say I much prefer the Manchester way of bar-b-quing chicken. These Midwesterns put the same kind of sauce they put on there pulled pork on their chicken. Don't get me wrong, it was good, just not as good as the ole' Lusk recipe!
Next was the ribs... WOW!! All 6 entries I judged were finger-licking fantastic! They were tender, smoked to perfection, with sauce added at the end! I knew ribs would be my favorite category, but I didn't know it would be so hard to judge. I think all my ribs had high scores!
Next was the pork. It could be pulled, chopped, sliced, or some combination of the three. As someone who literally grew up around this stuff, I knew what perfect pulled pork should taste like. Daddy, you should have competed, you could have taken them all! While none of the pork categories were trash, none of it was worth writing home about either. I also discovered that I'm not huge on sliced, too dry!
Last we had brisket. Not my favorite and defiantly the hardest to judge. I'm not a huge beef eater anyway, so when you don't cook it right and its tough, dry, and over seasoned, well its just not my kind of thing. Devin didn't mind eating the left overs though ;-)
Needless to say I had a salad for dinner after having a weeks worth of meat intake today. I had a blast though and I'm seriously considering taking the classes to be a certified judge and get to do this more than once a year! It really was a great way for our new home to say Welcome!!
Well now that your mouth is watering for some bar-b-que, tomorrow is church so I need to head to bed!
Sweet Dreams!
Eli
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