The past three weeks have featured Big T’z Q Cru once again traveling south of the border for two contests. The first one was the weekend of April 16-17 at the Capital City Cook-off in Jefferson City Missouri. This contest feature almost 70 of some of the best cooks the state from where Kansas City BBQ originated. Bruce Ring, a fellow competitor from “Let’s Kick Some Ash” cooking team was the organizer of this great event and did a fantastic job of accommodating the cooks. I was unsure where to fill up the water tank in the camper and before I knew it someone was there with a tank of water and gas-powered pump and was filling up my tank for me. What service! Additionally, ice was free all weekend, and if you don’t know ice at a BBQ comp can sometimes become a precious commodity—we have more than once had to send a teammate all over town trying to locate ice to refill our coolers.
After an uneventful night of cooking, I was feeling good, but I must be honest and say that after turn-ins I was not happy with how everything went. In hindsight I was more frustrated with the process, rather than the product, things just didn’t “feel” right. Those feelings quickly went away when we placed 5th overall, with calls for 6th place in chicken and 10th place in pork. We also got 11th place in brisket. This contest paid out to the top 5 overall, so it was nice to get a sizable chunk of the purse for our efforts
Needless to say we had a great time. It was a beautiful weekend with great weather. We were also placed next to our friends Kim and Andy Groneman from Smoke on Wheels, and our friends from TippyCanoe BBQ Crew made the trip down from Iowa as well, which added to the experience. Huge congrats to TippyCanoe for getting 3 real good calls and placing 3rd overall, our friends from Iowa’s Smokey D’s for Reserve, and Great Grills of Fire for winning their first Grand Championship of the year in their hometown! It also wasn’t bad having 3 Iowa teams in the top 5 in the capital city of Missouri either. ;-)
The second contest was the Apple Blossom BBQ in St. Joseph, Missouri. The contest was help in a beautiful park located downtown. What was also cool about this contest was that the Blue Angels were in town and flying overhead all weekend.
We weren’t as fortunate with the weather this weekend, as it rained off and on for most of the contest. We still managed to have a great potluck, put on by our friends Steph from TheSlabs.com and Kim and Andy Groneman from Smoke on Wheels. This potluck’s theme was “down-home” cooking, and it seemed everyone did their best to make a ton of some really great food. I couldn’t help myself but eat the most I have ever eaten at a contest to date. I swear after I was done I went in to a food coma for the next couple of hours.
This was the first contest in which Sonya could not attend, due to her having her baby shower on Sunday. My Mom and father-in-law did make it down and between the three of us we did our best to fill the big shoes Sonya has created in her role on the team, namely garnishing turn-in boxes and the turn-in procedure. Between the three of us we managed to put the boxes together closely resembling the way she does it in just under 4 hours. Sonya usually takes less than half that time.
The three of us also managed to do turn-ins without any disasters as well. After everything was turned-in and judging was over we ended up at 15th overall out of 58 teams with a call for 4th place in chicken. It wasn’t our best contest, but it wasn’t our worst ever. Huge congrats to our Jeff and Tammy Stith for Big Creek BBQ for Reserve Grand Champion and Randy Robinett from R Butts R Smokin’ Grand Champion! We had a great time and look forward to heading back there next year.
