Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Jack Trip 2010 - Day 6 (Judgement Day)

Turn-in day!   The reason we drove 30 hours from Regina, Saskatchewan to Lynchburg, Tennesee.
5:00 AM came quickly, but I felt great.   I rolled out of the RV to find that Smokin' Jim had laid out my 6 racks of ribs on the prep table, so they were ready for me to apply the finishing touches prior to loading them on the BBQ pit.   The ribs went on and I checked on the briskets and the butts...   Both had progressed well but appeared to be ahead of schedule.   They were wrapped with foil and placed back on the pit.   We dropped the temperature down by about 20 degrees (Remember, cooking on an unfamiliar pit...)  and continued the cook.  

The big meats were finished ahead of schedule by a couple hours... put away in the cooler to rest and get happy.   Final chicken prep took a couple hours; extra time for this contest because we had to cook both dark meat (ie thighs) and white meat (breasts this time).  This is a requirement of the Jack event only.  At some point, we headed over to Sugar's BBQ for the good luck Jack shot with the rest of the PNWBA crew.
Angie worked on our entry for the "Home Cookin from the Homeland" category, a seafood chowder made from fresh dungeness crab meat and BC prawns.   Mom & Jacy worked on our dessert entry.

Judging at the World Championships... A very serious affair!   The guy in the middle is our friend Perry Hopkins, organizer of the MOBC.  
Photo courtesy of Michael Stevenson

The final turn-in... dessert!



 


This was our rib entry... Looked good enough to be featured on the Jack Daniel's BBQ website.







Turn-ins approached quickly and went by just as fast.   We got all 7 categories turned in on time with just one very close call for the brisket.   The crowds at this event are unlike any I've seen...  25,000 people come out to the event.  With only 80 teams, you can imagine how crowded things are. It's like cooking in a fishbowl. We even had to chase a few people out of our enclosed cook site, people were coming right up to our table 15' away from the edge of our site.   More than one person crossed the 'rude' line... I suspect one of them produced this photo...

The stage... look at all those Jack trophies in the background...

Finally it was time to relax and crack a cold one.  (Sodee pop, that is!)   I wandered around and shook a few hands, met a few teams I hadn't had a chance to visit with yet.   We all took it easy; while most teams were busy packing up we just relaxed and soaked in the atmosphere.  It was another beautiful afternoon and anticipation was high!   We made it to the awards ceremony early and got some good seats on the floor of the Moore Country 4-H pavilion.   We were very excited to hear our name called for 2nd place in the "Home Cookin'" category, Angie's seafood chowder deserved the award, it was phenomenal!
After the awards, we headed back to the site and settled in for a long night of laughs, drinks, and good times.  Some of us saw the sun come up... Not me unfortunately, just can't do the all-nighters any more :-(.