Hey Dorothy are we in Kansas any more?

Paola Kansas August 28th and 29th 2009.

The title is a legit title to this Blog entry. The weather that last few weeks has been incredible for this time of year. Hopefully we do not pay for it this winter!

This was the first time Sticks N Chicks BBQ competed at Paola, but what an exprience. Located on the town square of Paola Kansas about 30 minutes south of Kanas City. This is an annual event that brings there town to a halt. It's the 20th annual Paola Roots and Blues festival and this town knows how to put on a party. The festival is an annual event that brings some of the biggest names to play Blues music, and perform on the massive stage they have set up. It's a small town feel with a rock star atmosphere. Over the last couple of years they have brought John Lee Hooker, Kenny Wayne Sheppard and this year they brought in Marc Broussard and The Robert Cray Band. Friday night we ventured up and watched Marc Broussard, and I will say, never seeing him or knowing who he is, that man can play guitar. Fun to watch and as I type this I still can not believe how many people where in the town square hanging out. Should have taken a picture!

One of the things that I always take in at a contest is where we have to set up our camp in relation to where we turn in our bbq. The set up for us at this contest, was somewhat of a hike. We were, I think 3-4 blocks away from turn in. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND, trust me it will make sense later. In the picture to the left, if you click on it and blow it up you will see the blue canopy in the distance. That is the roof of the stage. 50' this side of it was the entrance to where we went in to turn our stuff in. The walk from the entrance was about to the middle of the square.

Mike and Karen were kind enough to bring there RV down for us to stay in and again it never fails, we had a TON of people stop by and ask what are you guys cooking in, and we tell them trash cans. They look at the RV and look at the cans and shake there heads. I will admit I do think its funny. Thank you Mike and Karen for letting us stay in your RV, I will speak for all of us, it is a treat.

Saturday morning we woke up around 5:30am to get briskets and the pork butts rubbed down. Now real quick I have to paint a picture. You can see the banners hanging and please take note of the spot between the BBQ Brethern sign and the Budweiser banner, there is a small opening between the two. At 5:45am, mind you I am a little tired, maybe a little hungover, and basically not awake, I am working on the the pork butts and all of a sudden out of nowhere this dude pops in between the signs and says " Whats up"! Scared the hell out of me. He started telling me his life story and I basically tried to ignore his drunk ass and finally he left. Man he scared the crap of me! So 10 minutes goes by and what do you know the Paola PD stop by our camp looking for a white male, black ball cap and gray tee shirt. Guess what, it's the man that made me poop my pants. I told them that I saw him but did not know where he went. Turns out the drunkard started knocking on peoples doors at 6am and running off. Not sure if they caught him hope they did.

The morning moves along really nice. Remember we are cooking at high heat in a short period of time and keeping track of "when we turn or it will burn" we have to have several timers in place to keep track of what gets turned and what gets flipped.

The fun part of the morning always comes right before your first turn in. I get nervous becasue this is the time you have to pay attention to what you are doing. You want it to be a well oiled machine but any hicups and your have to know how to recover. So this beautiful morning things get a little crazy. We ran into a space issue because we decided to this contest on only 3 cans and no Fast Eddy! So chicken needs to get on and we cook chicken in lets say, X number of minutes. Well we are about 10 minutes behind and when we should have put them on. Matt our chicken Biatch is concerned, as am I.




Take note of the clocks above because the chicken is still on the UDS. Do these guys look concerned? There not. I am that's why I am taking pictures!




Chicken turn in at this and most contests takes place between 11:55 and 12:05. Well as you can see our chicken is still cooking. One thing to remember is chicken has to be cooked to 165 degrees or you will get sick. We got the chicken up to temp and we were ready to turn it in. Please take note that earlier in this blog I mentioned where our camp was, well we had to run to get it turned in. We made it but barely.

Overall this contest was a blast but as with any contest we learned a ton. Overall we finished 29th out of 63. Chicken we finished 10th and this call was AWESOME! We were not in the $$$ but we did get a call. Ribs we finished 27th out of 63 teams. Pork we finished 55th (Guess what we are trying a new recipe the next contest). Finally we finished 41st in brisket.

Our next contest is http://www.crosspointsbbq.com September 11th and 12th.