Rose City BBQ Festival

A new BBQ/grilling event is coming to Connecticut! The Norwich Rotary Club is organizing the Rose City BBQ Festival, which will be held Saturday, May 7th at Dodd Stadium in Norwich. The event will feature a New England Barbecue Society sanctioned grilling contest, a people's choice chicken wings contest, food vendors and more.

The good folks at Dodd Stadium have agreed to let us use the entire facility for the day, and batting practce will be available for the children. Hopefully they will let some of the big kids like me take a few cuts too!

The grilling contest categories have not yet been finalized, but will likely be chicken, pork ribs, sausage and chef's choice. The entry fee will likely be $100, and we hope to offer at least $3,000 in prize money.

The people's choice chicken wing contest: teams will be given enough wings to cook to fill a foil half pan , which will be delivered to a central location for sampling and voting by the public. This will be a blind judging event with an even playing field.

The application for teams and judges should be out soon. We think this is going to be a great event!

McRib

Well I broke down and tried the McRib at McDonald's yesterday. Can't say I was all that disappointed.

I remember having the McRib back in th early 1980s. I was maybe ten or eleven years old, and recall enjoying it. I'm not sure what the motivation was for McDonalds to bring it back now after all these years, but here it is.

The sandwich was pretty much as I remembered it. The meat is essentially a ground pork patty, doused with the BBQ sauce they serve with the McNuggets. The sandwich was topped with pickles and sliced onions. The meat was actually pretty juicy. No smoke flavor at all though, clearly cooked on a griddle.

Long story short, it ain't BBQ but it's ok.

Rough October

I'm glad it's November, because it has been a pretty rough October. Lost my father October 18th at the age of 82. One of his great joys in the last few years of his life were to come to the BBQ contests with us. He was at our first contest in Rhode Island in 2006, and even traveled with us down to the Jack that October. He really loved the Lake Placid and Harpoon contests though. It gets a little better each day but we all miss him a lot. Cancer Sucks!