Last year, about this time, I brought in a pot of chili for a small chili cook-off while I was temping in the D2C Department at Brown Shoe Company. After receiving plenty of positive feedback in that cook-off, I had no reason not to enter my chili into this year’s Brown Shoe Company chili cook-off-fundraiser for the United Way.

I’ve expressed my love for cooking a big pot of chili in a previous blog. I’ve got my “secret ingredients” that make my chili unique.

As you can see, I have the ground chuck and ground turkey breast slow cooking. That blog of purple looking stuff is grape jelly. I use grape jelly and brown sugar to give my chili a sweet taste. I had my chili cooked & filled my crock-pot to the brim with a concoction of goodness that would guarantee to make every taste-bud in your mouth to orgasm!

I put my game-face on and was ready for a smooth day of chili-goodness….oh yeah, or so I thought.

I placed my crock-pot on the “warm” setting at 10a.m. I was under the impression that I would have a half-hour to prepare my chili outdoors where the cook-off was taking place. I planned to crank the heat up on my crock-pot when I was able to stand over it and stir it regularly.

I took my cock-pot out to a table at 11:00a.m. I plugged her in and cranked the heat up. Everything was good to go…except I forgot to print-out the description of my chili, so people would be able to know exactly what they were tasting besides the basic ingredient of love in this pot of chili.

I ran back up stairs and printed off the following:

“Josh The Intern” Chili
This sweet meat and spicy beans chili consists of ground chuck & ground turkey slow cooked in brown sugar & grape jelly. A few cans of hot & mild chili beans as well as some diced tomatoes were mixed into the batch. A few diced jalapeños & mild banana peppers were added for a spicy flavor. Top this bowl of goodness off with some shredded cheese and your taste-buds will most definitely thank you.

(I also added chili powder and cumin spices to the mix…)

Now, to give you a bit of some background on the “Josh The Intern” bit. There is a series of emails that have been sent from shoes.com that had a persona of an intern, named Josh, clearly… The persona was based off of me while I was a temp there last year. I (“Josh the Intern”…even though I wasn’t an intern, it sounded better than “Josh the Temp”) would hook people up with deals on shoes since everyone else was out of the office and I was stuck working. Well, now that I’m back to help this holiday season, “Josh The Intern” emails have resumed. So many people have had no clue that there really is a Josh behind the “Josh the Intern” emails.

So I decided to play off of that.

Well, moving on….Have you ever felt like someone was out to sabotage you? Perhaps they were scared of the competition? After I brought my printed description back to my chili, I witnessed something.

A power outage.

Not a city-wide or company-wide outage, but a local crock-pot-catastrophy! No one had power! COLD CHILI! NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!

I also had a co-worker who looked very similar to Colby Caillat, sitting next to me with her chili.

So long story, longer…I had to wait for about 30 minutes into the competition before power was fully restored and my chili was at a temperature worth sampling. I received numerous compliments on my chili as well as “oohhs” and “ahhs” from those who didn’t realize I was Josh from “Josh the Intern” emails.

Colby even enjoyed a small sample of my chili. Unfortunately, she wasn’t voting…

Numerous people ran out of chili, myself included. Must have meant I had some popular chili….or they weren’t quite prepared for the volume of chili-tasters…hmmm…(better planning for next year? yes, please!)

Finally around 4 o’clock an email was distributed amongst the competitors. They revealed the “People’s Choice” and the “Judge’s Choice” Well, I didn’t win in either category…neither did Colby…the real winners were the children….right? Brown Shoe raised lots of money for the United Way!

I did receive 2 tickets to the Missouri Botanical Garden for participating! The grand prize was bragging rights and 2 tickets to next Sunday’s Rams/Saints game. I mean, is that even a prize??? For some reason I feel like that should have been given to the last place chili cooker and then they would be forced to watch an awful home team attempt to play football. I would have enjoyed going for free though…cause Lord knows I wouldn’t pay to go see the Rams….

Despite the results, I look forward to future chili cook-offs!

Tags: food