Going to Lincoln

Well it's official, the check and application is in the mail, we're going to Lincoln for the Winter Sizzler BBQ Competition.

I'm starting to get excited. The month of December is flying by, the holidays will fly by, next thing we know it will be MLK weekend and time to get back to it. I really expected that after the Jack, there would be at least five months of relative inactivity before the grilling competitions in March and the New England season opener in Rhode Island in May. Now we have something much closer to look forward to.

Q Haven started off so well in our rookie season. Third place in Rhode Island, grand champions at New Hampshire, then we hit the wall. Three more competitions including the Jack, and only one call. That was for dessert at the Jack, and they gave us the wrong ribbon. They took it away and told us they would send us a new one, and now I can't get anyone to answer e-mails about it.

Adding insult to injury, we recently got amended scores from the Jack, and apparently they forgot to add the international teams when they tallied the scores, and now they're saying we were 12th in dessert, not 10th. We probably should have kept that 5th place sauce ribbon, as I highly doubt we will be getting the one we were called to the stage for. The whole scoring thing was a complete mess, they need to work that out.

I went off on a Jack tangent there, but the real point is that I am not really happy with the way things went in those last three events. The first two events, I relied on my research and practice and it paid off. After that, everyone wanted to be more involved, with the added pressure of additional family and friends coming to events and being interested in what was going on. While that is great when people are interested, it can be a distraction and cause me to lose focus.

Hopefully we will be able to get the ship going straight again in 2007. I've already done a few practice cooks over the last month, and will keep practicing until the busy season comes in the spring.

In the meantime, I'm going to get a little "spying" in this week. Sheila and I are going into New York City on Friday to do the whole Christmas thing, and are planning to stop by Adam Perry Lang's restaurant Daisy May's BBQ in Manhattan. I hear good things, and am looking forward to sampling his Q.