Chili Cookoff Report (Now with photos!)

The brother in the codpiece
I seen him on the TV
I think he likes his ladies
all sweet and sugary
now I'm partial to a pudding
but that's for second course.
the main meal and the hors d'oeuvres
must be smothered in hot sauce.



It’s kind of like a race report, but with food, and no running at all.

My house is a complete wreck. The CPG Family Annual Patrick’s Birthday Chili Cookoff is over for another year. My head hurts and my eyes feel like sandpaper. Total success.

Five years ago I was a simple home cook with a simple dream. A dream of a family party in the middle of summer that would command the attention and the effort of all my family members, celebrate our massive collective ego, and give one of us a chance to be even more smug than usual. My brother Patrick’s birthday is in July. It’s hot as hell here anyway, so why not put the summer into high gear and get the kitchen nice and hot? The idea of a cookoff appealed to everyone, and even the less-enthusiastic cooks in the family could get behind a pot of chili.

The ground rules were simple. It must have meat and it must have beans. No real reason, except we knew that the playing field had to be level. Patrick is the sole judge. It’s his birthday and he does not feel like cooking on his birthday. So. There you have it.

The first two years, I won the cookoff. Of course I did. Smug me. Swaggering around with the championship crown with my Mona Lisa smile, looking with faint pity on the also-rans. Offering condescending, middling and insincere praise as I tasted these “others.” The prizes those first few years were bookstore gift certificates, and I remember my sister took a Brussels sprouts stalk and made it into a Miss America-style bouquet for the winner. Wave, CPG. Wave like the Queen. Thenk you. Thenk you. Oh, thenk you.

The entries that first year were all over the map: Scary Mary with her recipe gleaned from the Samuel Adams website. Desdemona and her surprising black-bean-and-chorizo version (KILLER). Ophelia’s misguided, corn-kernal-heavy edition. Ophelia’s husband, my brother-in-law Galahad's version, which uses cubed sirloin and a LOT of tomatoes, Lucrezia’s Bonfire of Humanity (it’s 9th Ring of Hell hot) version. Others of funk extraction. We were all over the place.

Last year, my brother Mick won. Just…inexplicably. Out of the blue. Mick. Single dad, in whose pantry is a lone box of Minute Rice. He absolutely freaked. This year, he knew he had to defend his title. So he’s calling me at 6 am telling me about the mincing, the chopping, the little dance steps he is doing all over the kitchen. He calls me again at 10 am telling me he is practicing his victory dance. I am getting calls all morning from contenders, comparing notes, trying to worm secrets out of me, attempting to intimidate me. My own version is pretty standard. I gave it my best shot and after an hour of simmering, I had to admit it lacked that certain something, and was destined to be an also-ran. I was tempted to mess around with it, but that just screws it up even further. Usually. So I just mentally walked away.

As the day wore on and I awaited the competitors and guests (I was the host this year), I worked myself up to a fever pitch of anticipation. Why (I wonder in retrospect) do we clean our houses to surgical-theater cleanliness when a herd of hungry, snorting, snarfing, shrieking, tipsy water buffalos are going to trample through that evening? Why? I should just get that frontal lobotomy and be done with it.

So in they trample. Crock pots all over the counter. Kids streaming in. Speakers blaring. Grocery bags. Salad greens. Corn bread. In about 3 minutes there are at least 8 empty beer bottles littering the counter, stove, etc. I lost control of the situation in about 10 minutes and I just gave up and joined my own party.

Time for The Main Event. Patrick was out back, chasing the kids and the chickens around the yards in a few warm-up laps. He was looking in good chili-tasting form…doing a few neck rolls, cracking his jaw, choosing exactly the right spoon, opening a cold beer and a stack of saltines as palate cleansers. As a judge, Patrick is fairly eccentric. He insists on drinking (wait for it) a Coors out of a can…and he brings his own supply for the occasion. He must have saltines. He refuses a blindfold, as he asserts that it messes with his sense of smell.





Have you noticed that recently when there is a BFD boxing match on pay-per-view, they spend 6 weeks working up to the event and then the fight is over in 13 seconds? Last year’s competition had been a veritable Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson slog-fest. Patrick went back in that tasting ring for round after grueling round of qualifying tastes before he had to award the title to Mick. What a gladiator. His taste buds took a beating in that one, let me tell you. But this time, it was more like Tyson-Spinks. Bang. Mick emerged the victor in one round.





The rest of us stood there -- agape --as Mick paraded around the house, arms in the air, singing the Notre Dame fight song. Over and over and over. Bastard was so smug. Makes my lip curl.

I had to admit…all of us had to admit…his was the best. He claims no secret ingredients. He claims only that he has a superior intuition about seasoning. He is delusional in the extreme and if I don’t see him again for a few weeks that can only be a good thing. I kid. He’s a peach.

Some notes: We have had other cook offs in my family, but this is the favorite and the most enduring. Next year we are opening it up to aunts, uncles, cousins, too. We plan on issuing T shirts to competitors and a medal for the winner. We also plan on having sports drink at each mile marker and a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band doing "Freebird."

As for me, I clearly need to do more specific training for this event, as my laurels -- lovely as they are --are insufficient.

Vast, Brainless, Fog of Idiocy


Having been in public relations and media in this city for nearly 20 years, I have had more than a passing interest in -- and experience with -- morning radio. Radio is certainly my medium of choice. Our newspapers here have had their struggles with credibility, labor issues, and quality. Television is (searches for adjective...pandering, uncreative, insulting, boring, hellish...) inauthentic. Radio asks one to bring brains and imagination to the table but does not demand too much more than that.

For years, part of my job was to listen up and down the dial to everything in an effort to find opportunities to place interviews with my clients, etc. I listened to some pretty rank shows -- bereft of innovation, honesty, laughs, or creative thought. I also listened to some shining examples of wit, smarts, chemistry, timeliness, thoughtfulness, and true identification.

On my own time I gravitated to Howard, to Public Radio and to a FUNK local jazz station. I am not a big jazz fan (I'm not deep enough, I admit) but the team on the radio in the morning had this subversive, quirky humor that captured me.

Then, Howard left me. I told myself I would be fine...really! -- I'm fine! Hey, he was not that great. At least 1/3 of the time I would have to change the channel to avoid the fawning interviews with strippers and Jenna Jameson. I am completely squeamish around f@#$ jokes and scatalogical humor (Look! She cannot even spell the word "f@&%"!!!).What kind of relationship is it when you need to turn him off 1/3 of the time, right? So I convinced myself I was better off without Howard.

Sans Howard, I was left only with the sadly diminished pool of morning radio here in my city. But it was part of my job, so I straightened my spine, squared my shoulders, dried my tears, and moved on down the dial.

Then came Adam Carolla. Adam, Sweet Adam. Dear, whiny, obsessive, fussy, snarky Adam. Adam with his humble roots, his superiority complex kept only in check by his own brutally funny perspective. Adam and his insecure-but-smart sidekick Theresa. She of the scary dating stories. The Lean Cuisine obsession. Then Adam invited the boorish Danny Bonaduce into the mix. Danny who makes Howard Stern's level of self absorption look like preschool hour compared to his own polished, well-rehearsed, artistic and diabolical way of turning every damned story around to himself. My Adam. He was Howard minus the strippers. Every morning spent with Adam. Really, what more could I ask for in a radio relationship? My heart beats for Adam!

Thank you, good folks at Free FM 103.7 in my city. Thanks for lobotomizing morning radio in this town yet again. Thank you very much for leaving me high and dry with nearly nothing. Bankrupt of wit, originality, laughter, knowledgability, well formed opinion. Thanks for nothing. The station changed owners and Adam is gone. Gone.

I just can't get over losing you
And so if I seem broken and blue
Walk on by, walk on by

I need to pick up the shattered remnants of my battered psyche. Somehow pick up the leftover threads of the rest of my life.

Foolish pride
Is all that I have left
So let me hide
The tears and the sadness you gave me
When you said goodbye
Walk on by (don't stop)
and walk on by (don't stop)
and walk by (don't stop)

Me and Dionne Warwick. We know pain, baby. We know.

It's lonely out there. Corny, phoned-in performances, canned banter, arid, humorless monologues, smug superiority bereft of any self-effacing characteristics. Self-congratulatory personalities. Fussy women in men's clothing. Hit-me-over-the-head moralistic lectures.

Adam exists in my car only in static-y snatches from a nearby city's wavelength. My Adam. Left me here all alone. How could you, Adam?

Unbreak my heart, Adam. Come back to me. I promise I'll stop sending you stalker-esque emails filled with smutty, vitriolic purges about my empty black heart... Just come back to me, baby.

Sneaking Around on My Church

I am in the middle of an ongoing church-related conundrum and it is so front-of-mind that I feel as if I need to spill it so maybe I can just get past it.

I sort of want to ditch my church for another one altogether but I can’t and really I know I never will…but I think about it all the time.

My two good friends belong to a non-denominational church. When the three of us discuss the sermons at their church’s services, I get completely amped. It’s marvelous to be able to discuss scripture and faith in such an earth-bound, unstructured way. I attend some of the women’s workshops at their church and afterward – days afterward – I feel revitalized in my faith, motivated, and really happy. Connected.

But I can never, ever leave my Catholic faith or my church. It would be like changing my ethnicity, my ancestry, my culture, my identity. It is so much a part of my upbringing, my woof and warp. I could no more change it than I could change my name.

Starting tomorrow, your name is Elaine. OK, fine. But deep inside I know I will always be me. I can’t change that.

I love what Father Brian gives my children: A sense of authority, structure, importance, gravity, warmth. He is at their school every morning, greeting them as they walk through the gates, visiting their classrooms. Catholicism is a huge part of their education. I want it to feed them as it fed me at one time. The grandeur, the structure, the reverence, the feeling of being part of something huge – I want that for them, and I still do want that for me.

But.

I love attending mass. I love the buttons it pushes for me. But there is a huge place in me that craves that personal relationship with God that has sometimes eluded me. I think maybe I might need to just try harder with my church. Put myself out there more. Work for the connection that seems to come so easily with the other church. I really do know I have to, for my children’s sake.

Going back over this post I am annoyed at myself for using “I” so much. Maybe that is the problem overall. Too much “Me and I” in my faith-related thoughts. Maybe there should be more “We, they and us.”

There is a line in the movie "Milo and Otis" --

Milo: You're a strange-looking cat.
Otis: Oh, I'm not a cat; I'm a dog.
Milo: All right, a dog, I understand, but... deep down inside, we're all cats, right?

I think I am trying to say that I will always be a cat, deep down.

Some Words That Apply

I realize that the Internet has invaded our privacy in an entirely new way. I also realize that I am guilty of furthering this particular evil. There have been those punchy late nights when sleep eludes and I end up slack-jawed in front of the computer. Why aren't I reading? Anything but this. Half-asleep. Ass glued to a chair. Self-loathing kicked into serious high revved-up gear. Grotesque.


Schadenfreude: Pretty much the basest of human emotions. The pleasure one takes in another's misfortune. I wonder why there is not a better word for the loathing for self that one feels post-shadenfreude.

I googled my former boss -- The Only Person On The Planet I Hate. But see, that is not exactly true anymore. I like to say I hate her, but I don't. I cannot muster up the flint to even feel anything for her. So when I found out (through the Internet) that some hardships had happened to her, I guess I skipped right over shadenfreude and dove directly into guilt. Guilt for ...I guess having ever hated her.

Is there a word for being an adult who should know better but still making the same juvenile mistakes over and over? I think it's "stupid."

Here's one I love: Jejune. Also: Puerile

I also found out that a friend I had known very well had recently divorced. Self-loathing again, when I realized how far out of touch she and I are that I don't already know about this. Also, weighted sadness when I recall that we got married three months apart, and in the same church, as members of the same parish.

The Internet makes me sick. This was what I was doing instead of sleeping? Instead of reading? Instead of sticking myself with pins?

So I did something useful and searched out some 10Ks to plot for my future. The marathon has not treated me kindly lately, so I may as well take on the distance I find the toughest. Can't go balls-out like the 5K. Can't pace yourself nice and slow and enjoy the scenery like the marathon. The 10K stumps me.

No more late-night Internet for me. Just in case, I have Elvis and Ann-Margaret, courtesy of my favorite enabler, Netflix, in abeyance. That's another good one: Abeyance.

"Mom -- He's shaking his butt at me!"

My God. I'm a parent.

The above remark (the butt remark) comes at top volume from the side of the house where my husband has cleverly installed an outdoor shower. An outdoor shower which is my favorite room in the house. Perfect in a misty, pearly morning, with a cup of hot black coffee, dew-laden spiderwebs and the citrus-y smell of honeysuckle. Sublime after a run, with a cold beer on the shelf built into the fence, with the hot sun beating down on the slate. Peaceful late at night with votives flickering all around and the night sounds of crickets and the mysterious rustle of hedge-creatures.

It is also one of my children's favorite places -- after the beach or on any mild evening after dinner in preparation for pajamas and bed. In this instance the warm water and twilight surroundings do nothing to quell their snarky argument, which ends, apparently, with my son shaking his butt at my daughter. Outrageous. They can argue about anything. I don't recall arguing very much with my little brother. Patrick and I were and are reassuringly compatible. My two...not so. Mercury personified: They are drippy-smoochy in love or raging, tear-streaked and accusatory.

I am a parent. Which is odd because I am still about 18 and annoyingly adolescent. Such a lie. It is only every now and then that I feel that I was not born a mother to these two chameleon-like creatures. Nefarious creatures. Angels. Gifts.

I'm tired.

PS: I joined a Sanskrit Chant choir. I have no idea what is in store for me. It fell into my lap and I have been aching to sing lately. So I joined. The women chat with a vernacular I don't really get (auras, internal centers, spiritual focus) but they are lovely and the music makes me happy. Can anyone who does not sing understand the actual physical joy that comes from making a beautiful noise?