lizzie + doug: Chili Cook Off!- Saturday, March 7, 2015

The day had finally arrived! It was time for the annual cook off! There had been trash talk going on in our house for DAYS and DAYS. Doug was making an all meat chili and I was making a meat and bean chili. It was on! We had 7 chili’s competing this year and a few strawberry shortcakes. I planned to compete in both.

Here is the list of past categories and past winners…

Doug got up to run 10 miles that Saturday morning while I went to get meat at Rare Cuts (Uptown). Those people know their meat! I got ground short rib ground, ground brisket and bacon for my chili. When I got home I found Doug had just arrived back and had been stung in the face by a bee. That bee just missed his right eye. His face was a bit swollen, but went ahead with our plans for the day. What a champ.

We headed to Rouses to get our last minute items for the night.

Once we got home, it was cooking time! Here is Doug’s meat…

And here is mine…

It was on!

Doug roasted peppers and made his own paste…

Doug had made a double batch so his pot was HUGE.

Once my chili was on the stove, I started making my strawberry shortcake biscuits…It took a few tries to make the dough, but I finally got it. Doug made my vanilla flavored whipped cream. I made my JoJo style strawberries. Doug aslo made me vanilla sugar to use in the biscuits and to top the biscuits. Yeah Doug!

Here is a time lapse of Doug cooking his chili!

Doug Cooks chili in 3 minutes….

Here they are ready for the party!

Samantha, Shawn and Lauren came early to hang with us as Sam has an early bedtime.

Then it was 7 pm and all the chili arrived to be tasted!

Time lapse of the tastings!

Less than 3 minutes of tastings…

All the people were there…

and we tasted and ate! Everyone voted for their favorite chili and then moved on to taste the strawberry shortcakes!

After all the votes were tallied, the winner was announced…

Shockingly, I won BOTH categories! I won the Chili and Strawberry Shortcake cook offs! I was shocked. All the chili entries were so different. We had an orange one, a white one and many dark ones. My personal favorite was Shawn and Jamie’s sweet meaty chili.

Then we played some running charades and bad a blast. Thank you to everyone who came, entered, tasted and celebrated my birthday with me. I really had a blast!