BBQ Contest a Success!

This past week-end we competed in one of the most respected and larger BBQ contest in North Carolina. Teams from as far away as Pennslyvania, Florida, Virginia, Alabama as well as North and South Carolina were there. In fact there were 63 teams all together at the Hog Happnin' in Shelby, NC. We love cooking at this contest because it's for a great cause and some of our family members live right there.

So the results (which can be seen at the Hog Happnin' website) are - drum roll! We, the "At Ease Moonlighters" won 7th place in the Chicken category and 10th place in the Ribs category. And out of 63 teams, we were 4th overall! That overall ranking is our highest so far!

He are a few pictures of the team and spectators in action:

Don, the Pitmaster, and Jonathan, the "Roady" as he called himself preparing some meat for the cookers early Friday afternoon.

After getting our meat onto the cookers for the competition it was time to entertain a few of our friends and family who were willing to come out on a chilly Fall day to show their support and enjoy some food. We had Ribs, Early Autum stew, Dutch Oven Potatoes, and an assortment of desserts. (Sorry forgot to get pictures of the food.)

Here's Faith insisting that she walk with her Mom, Rachel's help. And the good news is that Faith loves Barbeque!

Here's Faith's dad, Jason helping to put the finishing touches on our ribs that we were serving up Friday night.

The real action is Saturday morning. Here's our Roady's wife, Beth pitching in to prepare the garnish in our turn in trays. This is a very important job since one of the criteria that judges look for is appearance.

Here Don and Matt, one of our fans, and my brother, check the meat on the cooker to see how it's coming.

One of my responsibilities is to be sure the entries are put in the trays and everything looks just right for the judges.

Here is Elise administering wet paper towels to keep our finger prints off the boxes! A very important job when it comes to crunch time, because we only have a 10 minute window to get each entry turned in or we're disqualified.

Here's Beth after she turned in her sauce entry, our last entry of the day! She's speaking for us all! We're always relieved to see that last entry turned in on time. Sauce is an extra auxillary category and for the past two years we've let Beth mix up a concoction of her own. This year her entry came in 10th out of 41 entries! Way to Go Beth a top 10 finish and in the top 25%. We just hopes she can remember what she did for next year!