The Delta House

This is it! The weekend for which we have been waiting all winter!

Tomorrow is the Second Annual Rhode Island State Barbecue Championship, the first competition of the 2006 NEBS season. My team will be entering both the grilling and barbecue competitions, and we plan on taking home some cash and hardware.

It's a two day event, with teams competing in a grilling contest on Saturday and the barbecue portion on Sunday. The grilling categories are Grilled Appetizer, Foods of New Orleans, Seafood and Country Style Ribs. As usual, the barbecue categories are chicken, pork shoulder, beef brisket and pork ribs.

Though it is a group effort, we each take a grilling category and make it ourselves. I am making the "Foods of New Orleans" with a homemade Shrimp and Andouille Boudin.

For those of you that think this is some kind of a joke, I assure you that it is not. We take this very seriously. Well, at least as seriously as one can take staying up all night with the guys, drinking beer and cooking delicious food.

These contests are my only break from reality this summer, unless I can somehow score some Buffett tickets for August. It is the only time that I can hang with the fellas and kick back sans Mrs. Flounder and baby Jake, so I intend to live it up.

The best part of the contests is the extra food. See, we make like three whole pork shoulders, totaling around 20 lbs. We turn in the very best looking and tasting portions, and have the rest for lunch or to give out as samples. The same goes for the ribs, brisket and chicken. Needless to say, I am a very popular guy in my office on a Monday morning after a contest!

Thankfully, the weather outlook is good for this weekend, so we shouldn’t have any reasons to complain. Have a great weekend everybody!

// posted by flounder @ 7:53 AM