So yes folks, let me tell you about my very first and definitely not last annual Chili Cookoff at Traders Village here in Houston last month. I don't know what my thing is about chili and BBQ, honestly, I can only contribute my total interest in these two things to having lived in the south for the past five years and having eaten some very interesting grub. What else could it be? So I was totally psyched to hear there was going to be a cookoff around here. Months in advance I marked it on my calendar (and the next one, at the annual Houston Rodeo which lasts 3 weeks, is on my list too!).
I don't know what I was expecting, but whatever it was, it wasn't what I found. So it was a super cold and windy afternoon, I'd say it was in the 50s which I am totally embarassed to say I now find to be quite chilly. Perfect weather for chili. We went to Traders Village which is this huge outdoor market with lots of cheap crap for sale. We walked around thinking that the cookoff would be obvious or that at least we'd smell it somewhere. No, of course not. And even a guy that works there was like "Uh, I don't know 'bout no chili cookoff. They don't tell me nuthin' 'round here". Uh.... OK. ?? Don't you work here, dude? But whatever. We wandered around until we found these two huge tents filled with people cooking chili.
We eventually noticed a tent that was selling bowls. Six bowls for $5 plus a spoon and a little ticket. What you do is take your bowls around and when you see some chili you'd like to try, you give the cooks your bowl and they fill it up. You do this until you're full and then you give your ticket to the team whose chili you like the best. At the end of the day, the team with the most tickets wins the contest. Easy. There were like 150 teams competing I was like well shit, I'm never going to be able to eat all of those, but for sure I'll be able to eat like at least 12 or 18 bowls of this stuff. Then she gave us our bowls. These were no baby bowls, they were decent sized and I knew then that I'd only be trying six. We go in.
And stand in silence, shocked. Ummmm... yeah, like, I totally forgot about the redneck/hillbilly factor. How could I have forgotten? I mean, we're talking chili and not caviar, right? Obviously I wasn't expecting to run in to people from Food Network or whatever, but... well, I don't know. Let's just say that there were lots of teams in which the number of teeth were small, the cowboy hats big, and the spurs visible. Big guys, you know what I mean? Women with high hair. Lots of make-up. And signs saying things like "Proud to be a Redneck". And honest to God, someone had brought an outhouse and decorated it and like just had it sitting around next to their station. We asked a man for our first bowl of chili and I tried not to stare at his mouth. The chili was decent. Then we were corraled to another team who were giving away blue coolies (why did we get those can coolies?!) and their chili was awesome. But a little too hot, especially taking into consideration this mouth sensitivity issue I have right now. Their other kind, however, was awesome. Then, we tried a chili that was very weird, I don't even get it and I still don't. It had like chunks of things in it that were very un-chili-like to me but that he said formed the basis of the traditional Texan chili. It was okay. But then we had the nastiest, grossest chili ever. And when I say ever, I mean MY GOD THIS SHIT WAS NASTY AND I HOPE TO NEVER EVER EAT ANYTHING LIKE IT IN MY LIFE. It was like ground meat and peanut butter. We were totally led to them by all the trophies they had at their stand--I should have looked closer, they must have been like T-ball trophies or something, because they couldn't have been for winning chili contests. Nasty. I'm sick just thinking about it. We trashed that stuff immediately and repented of having used a precious bowl. Let's move on....
So yes, Carlos and I didn't agree on our favorite chilis but we voted and had a great time. We stared at the Texans and tried to keep our jaws from dropping. When we left, Carlos said, "You know, your chili isn't so bad. Maybe we should enter the contest next year." Ha! And who knows, maybe before we leave I'll have entered a chili contest.
