Last weekend was the big American Royal BBQ that I’ve been looking forward to so much.  And, I must say, it lived up to my anticipation nicely.  The event was at Kemper Arena downtown, and we all headed down there Thursday night.  We got all set up and then just sat around playing cards the rest of the night, until it was time to put on our first round of food at 2:00 Friday morning.  Martin, Schmidt and I stayed down there at the site, and everybody else bailed home for a little quality sleep.

Friday is considered the big “party” day at the event.  We spent quite a bit of time getting ready, as well as trying to stay dry since it rained off and on all afternoon.  We were lucky enough to be located right under a highway overpass, so we hunkered down there when the rain got too bad.  (The overpass was good for the rain… not so good when we were sleeping.)  The party started up around 6:00, and we had a rather impressive crowd show up.  We went through 35 lbs. of brisket, a couple of slabs of ribs, several pounds of chicken wings, a pork tenderloin, and a bunch of sides in the space of about an hour.  Next year I guess we need more food.  (Well, there was ham left over, but that’s another story.  And we had a “situation” with the pork butts; they didn’t get done in time for the party.)  It was a heck of a good time but actually quite a bit of work.  The weather wasn’t very good either… It got downright COLD and the wind kicked up pretty strong.  I got my competition brisket on about 10:00 that night and then tried to “mingle” a bit, but by midnight I was falling asleep in my chair.  So, I went to bed.  The party was pretty well broken up by then anyway.

Saturday morning we got up around 6:00 and got back to work.  I was more than a little dismayed to hear that after I had gone to bed my smoker had spiked up to 350 degrees, and nobody could get it cooled down.  BUMMER!!!  For the most part I sat on a hay bale and sulked the rest of the afternoon.  My brisket for the party came out very well, if I do say so my darn self, and I was counting on this one to come out the same.  But there wasn’t much to do about it at that point but wait it out; not like you can start over.  At least the weather had taken a turn for the better; not a cloud in the sky and I’d say it was mid-60’s or so.

We had progressively placed higher and higher aspirations on our entries since the contest started, and I think everybody was starting to feel a little pressure.  Our goal when we started planning this event was to not get disqualified.  Then we raised the bar a bit and decided we didn’t want to come in last place.  By Saturday afternoon we had kicked it up yet another notch and decided we didn’t want to come in the last 10 places.  Considering there were 475 teams, it would truly take an effort to do that badly, but we were a bit nervous all the same.  As it turned out, we did fairly respectably.  My brisket did lousy, but coulda been worse.  I didn’t like it either so I couldn’t complain too much.  I would blame the smoker issue, but Joe and Bob used the same fire and did rather well with their pork.  Martin’s ribs did about as well as my brisket… coulda been better, but coulda been a lot worse too.  The best finish on our team was Todd’s chicken.  Yes, Todd, whose cooking experience consists of toaster pastries.  Toaster pastries done in the microwave, not a toaster.  What can you do, the world is not always a fair place.  Not to sound like a sore loser though; It WAS some darn good hen.

We wrapped up around 3:30, and I went home and slept for about 16 hours.  My project for the week is to somehow get the barbecue smell out of my car.  Overall, I consider the event an enormous success, and can’t wait to do it again next year.  I’ve already started researching smoker modifications to prevent a repeat of the blast-furnace situation, and I’ve got a few good ideas.  Todd, Munkirs and I met down at the Brooksider Sunday afternoon for a little post-event recap, and came up with a list of things to improve on for next year.  Mostly the list consists of more food, more smokers (or a bigger smoker,) and a few key re-configurations to our booth.  There’s a few pictures of the event posted, check ’em out.  (I don’t know how they ended up under the “vacation” section… I need to clean that up a bit.)