Sit down. You need to be sitting down for this. Attached you will find our expense report for materials used in Sunday's chili cookoff.
DON'T LOOK AT IT!
Please, not yet. I need to tell you a few things first.
You see, we almost won. Although, that isn't necessarily reflected in the statistics. But according to the "Test Cup Theory of Chili Judging," Honolulu Lite's "Three Varmint Chili" was definitely one of the favorites. We ran out of the little "test cups" used to give out samples of our chili to the masses. Each team got the same number of cups. But we ran out of ours before a lot of other booths. Like the booth right next to ours, run by the Blues Brothers. Not the real Blues Brothers, just a couple of haole guys who are part of the Legends in Concert thing. I don't know what kind of chili they made, but they had tons of tasting cups left. Maybe it wasn't actual chili they made. Maybe it was just pretending to be chili. Whatever the case, they were nice enough to give us a bunch of their cups.
That means people liked ours more. It's just that when it came to voting for us in the "people's choice" category, the dirty rat tasters who had mobbed our booth let us down. They must have gotten all margarita'd up and forgot about voting. But trust me, we were in there.
Why was ours the best? Because we had great ingredients and a great team. (DON'T LOOK AT THE RECEIPT YET!)
Our team was made up of Tessie Resurrection, your boss' secretary; graphics editor Kevin Hand, who would have won for best T-shirt design had that been a category; my wife Margie; my kid Sarah; and my attorney John Perkin (I never leave home without him.) What a team.
Into the "Three Varmint Chili" went the best meats: lean chicken thighs, lean ground beef and the best center cut pork. All of it was browned on the barbeque before going in the pot. We also had four different types of bell peppers (green, red, yellow and orange.) And Maui onions and fresh garlic. I know, it sounds kind of pricey, but it was worth it. (DON'T LOOK AT THE RECEIPT!) We almost won.
IT took days of planning and shopping to get ready for the contest. On the morning of the contest, we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly, Hills that is. Actually, Kakaako. But we had so much stuff in the truck (tables, chairs, deck umbrella, barbeque, etc.) we looked like the Clampetts.
At 8:30 a.m. we were directed to our little 9-foot-by-10-foot parking space and set up our area. Ours was a very basic booth, just the deck furniture, a couple of tables and all the cooking junk. We had to bring everything. There was no water or electricity available. Other booths were pretty exotic: double-decker wood-framed buildings, rent-a-tents - projects that must have cost those companies a lot of money. But we decided to put most of our resources into the chili. (DON'T LOOK!)
We took part in the "spirit parade" of cooking teams, even though we didn't have the fancy costumes. We knew we looked pathetic. When it came time to stand before the "parade judges," we simply went down on one knee, crossed ourselves and begged for mercy. Needless to say, the team that spent a lot of money on hats and costumes won.
Yes, at the end of the day, we had no trophy or ribbons. And, yes, the cost of "Honolulu Lite" banner and T-shirts left a large dent in my wallet. But we feel we represented the newspaper with dignity and grace that surely will lead to more street sales.
So, go ahead now and look at the receipt. See, it's not that bad, is it? Next year can we buy sombreros?
