The Fifth Annual Chili Rumble
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Portland, Oregon
Participants set-up: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Tasting and judging begins at 5pm sharp, ends at 7:00pm sharp
Winners announced at 7:30pm
THE RUMBLE:
The night will be divided into two parts, the "rumble" and the "party":
participants/attendees:
Please be sure to RSVP below. You do not have to bring a chili to attend. Feel free to bring along friends but try to include them in your RSVP count if possible. Please RSVP by Saturday, January 28th.
All competing chilis are asked to be on-site, warmed, and ready for
tasting by 5pm. You won't be excluded if you are late, but your chili might miss a few judges and receive less votes. Since the tasting areas may be away from the kitchen,
we strongly recommend bringing your chili in a slow
cooker/crockpot/hotplate to help keep it warm. (which if you don't
have
a crockpot, you really should get one anyway, they are awesome).
Please bring at least 2 quarts of chili. The really popular chilis are often gone before the judging stops.
Think up of a good name for your chili (separate from your own name) as there is also an oppotunity to win for your chili's name. We will have index cards available that you can write your chili name on when you arrive. And yes, as Zac C. once asked, you can dress up your crockpot with "Flair" (ribbons, 50 dollar bills, etc) if you are trying to curry votes from the judges.
judging:
Judging will run from 5:00pm-7:00pm.
You can taste from one, two, or all three categories. The only thing we ask is that you try every chili in each category you are judging. Taste each chili in SMALL quanties (a great way to do this is by bringing a muffin tin) to ensure that you don't get full right away, and that everyone has a chance to try every chili. After the votes have been collected (around 7:00pm) it is "open season" on all the chilis where you can then eat as much as you want of any chili.
Categories are independent of each other when it comes to voting. You will get three votes per category, to which you can give all three of your votes to one chili or spread your votes out amongst the category.
Chilis will also be numbered, so if you bring a muffin tin and then you can place the samples of chili in the tin and taste them in an organized fashion. This makes it really easy to keep track of what chili you are tasting.
awards:
The votes will be tabulated by people finely skilled in the ancient art of "counting". The winners of each category will be announced at 7:30pm, complete with awesome prizes
THE PARTY
We are capping entries at 10 per category since this fits in a muffin tin and is managable in terms of crockpot to table ratios.
Again this year we are asking you to bring a donation for the Oregon Food Bank. The Oregon Food Bank receives many of their healthiest and highest-quality donations from individuals. Since the theme is chili we encourage you to bring canned chili, dried beans, canned tomatoes or other chili-making ingredients. Then again, our friend witnessed a fight break out over a bottle of vegetable oil while volunteering, so that's a great option as well, but please no glass. Cash or checks made out to the Oregon Food Bank are also greatly appreciated.
When judging jars have been collected around 7:00pm, guests
are
invited to enjoy as many of the chilis as they want in meal-sized
quantities. If you don't care about judging and just want to eat chili right when you walk in the door, show up after 7:00pm.
This began as a potluck of sorts, so if you aren't bringing a chili, please bring some other food item to share such as chili toppings, chips and/or dips, dessert or anything else you want to share. Kids love it when someone remembers to have juice boxes or other non-alcoholic drinks on hand.
All guests are encouraged to bring a bowl, a spoon and a glass. To simplify judging, bringing a muffin tin has grown in popularity the last couple of years (see above). We recommend muffin cups too, for ease of multiple category tasting.
We are happy to provide beer for the festivities. Last year we had a
full keg from Hopworks, but Craig still had to make multiple bicycle trips to 7-11 to get
more beer. So that we have enough beer beforehand, please be sure to RSVP below if you are planning to attend. If you wish to bring beer as your potluck item please let us know in the comments field!
Kids are welcome. We are sad to say that this will be our first chili rumble without Bonzi. It will also be the first chili rumble for our new pup, Freddie. She is a large puppy at 60+ pounds and has not yet experienced the rumble, so expect some dog excitement to occur at some point in the night. In addition, our house is not exactly child proof . So if you are bringing your kids you probably want to bring something that will keep them entertained and also keep an eye out for them (and other nearby kids). And don't worry, there will be many other kids here and they will likely also entertain each other.
RSVP:
Traditional Chili:
(9 entries so far)
Traditional Chili is um, chili in the traditional sense. It is made with meat, spices, and often beans.. If you went to the store and bought a can of Nalley's chili and opened it up, you would have "Traditional Chili".
Vegetarian Chili:
(4 entries so far)
This chili has no meat. There are no ground rules for what has to be in the vegetarian chili, it just cannot have any meat.
Non Traditional Chili:
(6 entries so far)
This is mostly an "anything goes" sort of category. These were the chili's that never got asked to dance in high school and/or were picked on because they were so weird and different. Case in point, a chili named "White Shadow" that contained navy beans and chicken. It was non-traditional for sure, but at Chili Rumble #1, it annihilated the competition and all the other chili's ended up mowing White Shadow's lawn.
Uncle Carl's free range non gmo assowie berry chili!
22
1
3
Chili
19
0
4
Mayan Breeze
10
0
2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009
This chili rumble was a minor zoo and broke the house attendance record. Amazingly the house was empty by 10:30pm. We had 27 different chilis and a lot of fun.
The first Chili Rumble had a decent crowd and 13 chilis entered. The breakdown tally is written on a piece of paper
somewhere in Craig's filing cabinet. We only picked a single winner from the two categories. The two winners each received a stamped GI dog tag "medal".
