The 1st Annual Semi-World Famous Blivmore Chili Cook-off

I really like to throw food competition parties, as evidenced by the poorly competed Easter dinner mac-n-cheese cook-off.  This chili competition was largely inspired by one of the best Atlanta festivals, Chomp and Stomp as I had intended on entering my chili in their competition but just got too lazy and decided to throw my own competition instead. Several components are essential to a successful chili competition, as shown below.

1. Hilarious friends. I have a never ending supply of fantastic friends who will come out for these sorts of parties and do silly things (CJ- I'm calling you out) like draw pictures on my chalk board wall.  The more hilarious friends you can invite, the better. If you have to throw in a few dud friends, it will be okay. The hilarity will ensue regardless.

2. Multiple TVs.  Sadly, not all of your friends will be willing to enter a chili into the competition. You'll need to think of another way to get them to come over and the prospect of multiple football games being shown in one room AND chili will usually do the trick. At least it works for my friends.  A fridge full of beer will usually help sweeten the deal for those who need additional bribing. (no, I don't usually have two TVs in my living room)

3. Tasting supplies and score sheets.  I opted to splurge on compostable/biodegradable bowls and spoons from Sustainable Party because I'm a crunchy granola hippie at heart.  Scoring was Iron Chef rules, 5 points for presentation, 5 points for originality and 10 points for taste.

4a. A war zone of a kitchen.  Brian and I were both making our chilis on the stove at the same time. Since we're smart people, we did most of our prep work separately so we were really just fighting for burners and a bit of counter space.  Never before did I realize just how awesome my ginormous double sink is until I singlehandedly dirtied almost all the prep bowls in the kitchen and needed space to wash them.

4b. The war zone continues. Thank goodness for our galley style kitchen so we could each have our own side, or this could have been a bigger disaster.

5. Frantic last minute prep work.  Okay, so frantic is an overstatement. My friends weren't frantic, this wasn't really Iron Chef.  KMS braved Brian's no-joke box grater and was skilled enough to not grate a finger. Or maybe it was her super sharp cheese, probably a bit of both.

6. Prizes. I failed to photograph my prizes, but the 1st place prize was two super cute soup crocks from World Market and last prize was pre-packed chili mix. Prizes are an important part of the bribery to get people to compete. People love prizes, everyone knows that.
7. A good place to display the finished products.  Brian, smartly, designed this breakfast bar when we re-did our kitchen earlier this year. A breakfast bar is the perfect place to display chili. I suppose a dining room table would work as well.

8a. Chili #1 - my chili. accompanied by some jalapeno-cheddard cornbread squares.  I remade my Fired Chili from several months back. I thought it came out delicious.

8b. Chili #2 - Brian's chili. Complete with bread bowl.  Brian put bacon in his chili, and many other meats. It was a meat lover's dream, and was really good. I'm not just saying that because he's my husband. It actually drives me insane that he can make things off the fly that I've been perfecting for years and his dishes come out better than mine. I secretly believe that he lives to beat me at things, but that's just me being poor-me-polly-pissy-pants.

8c. Chili #3 - Jed's chili. Jed took his chili to the next level with several toppers. Jed also practiced his chili, made his own chili paste and spilled a whole bunch in his truck on his way to Casa Blivmore.  His was all meat and spice and quite different from mine but delish just the same.

8d. Chili #4 - KMS's chili. KMS pulled out all the stops and themed her chili around Yuengling Black & Tan.  She made tasty beer bread and a quite scrumptous chili.  It needs to be said that this was KMS's first ever batch of chili.

8e. Chili #4 - Molly's chili. Molly was also a chili making virgin prior to her competing.  She stepped it up with fritos which was a fantastic idea (coming from someone who thinks fritos are gross because they smell like dog, that's saying a lot). 

9. Semi-blind, mostly fair scoring. Below is the final tally on our chili competition.  I tried to keep our tasters blind to the creater of each chili, but I think they all ended up learning who made which creation. I also forbade competitors from scoring other chilis because that would clearly lead to bias. 

The picture isn't great, but it should come at no shock that Brian's bacon + beef + pork chili won. A note for future competitions - BACON ALWAYS WINS! KMS came in second which is pretty fricking awesome since this was her first ever chili.  Brian bequeathed his soup crocks onto her because I already own about 6 soup crocks and don't need anymore.  Sadly, (and surprisingly to me) Molly lost. But Molly did get high marks from MD, so she didn't lose on all fronts.

I'm pretty sure this party will go down in Blivmore party history as super-great-fantastic. Now I need to come up with the next food competition challenge.