North Kansas City

Our second contest of the year was in North Kansas City. It was our third time cooking this one and this contest has had a few organizational problems in the past. This year they moved locations and fixed a few other issues and put together a pretty solid event. It's a shame the weather wasn't a little better.

With the new location the sites were all centrally located around Finnegen's, a bowling alley and event center in Northtown. This put us all closer to cleaner restrooms and it allowed them to hold the cook's meeting and awards indoors as opposed to outside as in years past. We also got a our full results print out instead of waiting for them to be posted online. There were some other issues with alcohol consumption that were worked out with NKC officials as well - which is good because I like to drink beer.

After braving the cold, wind, rain and snow we got everything turned in on time - but just barely...I took way too long on our pork & brisket boxes but Chris literally ran our boxes in just in time and in the end we faired pretty well - finishing first in ribs and ending up fourth overall. I was a little disappointed in our pork score as I thought it was pretty good. Chicken was OK. We tried a new recipe and it will need some tweaking, but we are on the right track. Brisket continues to weigh us down. We actually scored better than I thought we would, but I think it was just luck.

All in all it was a good weekend...we got to hang out with our ol' pals The Slabs and took in a few of the Big XII Basketball tournament games over at Pork Me Purple's site (nice brisket call, Jerrod), had a nice dinner with fam and friends on Friday, then we got a surprise visit from my buddy Officer Jon Going and we even came home with a little bit of money, which will help us keep feeding our BBQ habit.