“C” is for chili, that’s good enough for me!

On a cold, Winter night; there’s very few (non-sexual) things that feel as good or warm you up as much as eating a bowl of chili.

But when you don’t have a bowl of chili, between 15 and 20 tiny cups full of it and handfuls of saltine crackers will have to suffice. Especially if some of those cups are full of some good, spicy Fire Department chili. Those guys can make some mean chili.

My first chili cook-off ended up being a rousing success. The only thing that it was missing was copious amounts of beer. Sobriety aside; it was still good to be out, see some friends (Merritt, Jake & Turner), cheer on some runners, bite my tongue to avoid telling kids there was no Santa, and (most importantly) eat some free chili.

There were about 10 entries total, and I’d say that it was split pretty evenly: the top 5 were really good and the bottom 5 were absolutely horrible. And not horrible as in bad tasting. But horrible as in really having no taste at all or just being way too runny like a soup.

The 2 best (for me anyways) were what seemed to be a barbeque sauce based chili (we guessed KC Masterpiece) and the SFD’s good-&-hot-but-not-too-hot, thick chili. The worst was definitely Larry’s Giant Subs’ chili, which that had the most promise of all. It had big chunks of meat, veggies and beans; but had almost no taste at all. I was almost mad that it came up so short.

And I did get some good laughs from volunteers, judges and contestants when they saw that I brought Hank and Alfonse along with me. I was hoping to garner some sort of “biggest chili fan” award, but no such luck. And poor Alfonse didn’t even get to get in on the action. It was all Hank, that greedy little red & silver SOB.

If I could have run in the race before hand, the day/evening would've probably been a little bit better. And all the “you’re not running?” that I got really was enough to make me want to do it next year to work up an appetite for some chili. Or throw up a bunch of chili later on, but whatever.

So until next year’s Holiday Chili Cook-off, I’ll keep the chili posts to a minimum. Or at least until I find out about another cook-off.

D