I’ve been into barbecue for a relatively short time.  I got a book in June 2004 called How to Grill by Steven Raichlen.  Great book to get started!  After that, I started thinking about maybe getting into competition…

To compete or not to compete?

Deciding to compete wasn’t that big of a deal, really. There was a competition about 2 hours away,
and I didn’t have any sense, so I signed up. Simple, huh? We hadn’t even
visited a competition, let alone been involved in one, but my reasoning was
that if I showed up to visit, I’d be a nuisance, but if I competed, I’d be
there the whole time and have time to talk to people and learn things. I’ve got to say we definitely learned a lot. Maybe the most important thing we learned
was that competition people are really friendly and like to have fun.

Mistakes before even showing up

My first mistake after signing up was to post something on
the BBQ Forum about getting into my first competition. I made a comment meaning something innocent
but it was taken badly… I think it was something about not caring about any
lousy judges. I didn’t mean lousy as in
bad… I meant that I was planning on cooking what I knew, not what a judge that
I didn’t know was expecting. The good
part was that I got some air time on the forum with it, and, by the time I got
to the competition, several people at least knew of my exploits in cyberspace.

Getting ready for the competition, we did a couple of
practice cooks. I also downloaded a
checklist for the day, and ran through what I might need to have ready. Mistake number 2 was that I thought of the
supplies we’d need, but not how to organize them… cardboard boxes don’t work
well, trust me!

My next blog will be on the events of the week leading up to the competition.

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