Star-Journbal Editor
The West Texas Chili Monster was a no-show at the Hillsboro Holly Days Chili Cookoff this past Saturday.
The table was set with seven pots of some of the best chili to be found in these parts, but the monster never came; and event officials wondered why.
Was it because the monster's favorite chili — "Mama's rip-roarin', root-n-tootin', rip-snortin' chili" — wasn't in the contest?
Or, because the entries lacked warning-label names, such as Arthur's Afterburner, Burn Down the Barn, Susan's Screaming Sensation, or Linda's Legal Lip Remover?
In the children's book "The West Texas Chili Monster," unexpected things happen when Mama's chili attracts a space monster to the West Texas chili contest.
Local officials now believe the West Texas Chili Monster was a no-show because seven pots of chili simply weren't enough to draw him all the way north to Hillsboro City Hall.
"I think what it boiled down to is that the chili monster wanted more entries," said chamber of commerce director Christy Wulf.
"And, if I was the monster, I think I would've wanted a lot hotter chili," she added.
"There was some spicy chili, but I think the chili monster wanted it far hotter than that."
While no entries were mistaken for Tommy's Toe-nail Curling Chili, there were enough spices in the unofficial, non-sanctioned cookoff to satisfy its four, local, semi-celebrity judges, Stephen Humber, Chuck McLinden, Joe Alvarez, and Jim Elliott.
Their combined sense of taste and humor helped make the town's first chili cookoff a highlight of the third annual Holly Days celebration.
"I thought of everything this weekend, the chili cookoff was the most fun," Wulf said.
In the competitive world of chili cookoffs, the first Hillsboro contest was small beans.
Chili cookoffs have become major events in the United States and several foreign countries, with district, regional, and state cookoffs leading to the world championship event.
The International Chili Society (ICS) is a non-profit organization that sanctions chili cookoffs. It bills itself as the world's largest food contest and festival organization, and includes thousands of "Chiliheads."
They compete in ICS-sanctioned cookoffs around the globe, including the 40th Annual World's Championship Chili Cookoff, held last month in Omaha, Neb., which drew more than 400 award-winning chefs in three categories: Red, Green ("Verde"), and Salsa.
There were more than 150 chili cooks, with entries narrowed down to 35 bowls on the finals table. The winner, J.R. Knudson, received a check for $25,000 and ConAgra presented him with an additional $5,000 bonus for using their products in his "Rough and Ready Chili."
In real cookoffs, chili must be cooked on site. There were no rules at the Hillsboro event, but while someone could have opened a can of Hormel, or gone through Wendy's drive-through, it's a pretty safe bet nobody did.
"We had no qualifications," Wulf said. "You had to bring a gallon of it; that was my only requirement."
In fact, according to the rules, this wasn't really a chili cookoff at all. Not to bad-mouth these chili contestants, but a real chili cookoff has rules.
"You know that's the thing about chili, is that it's hard to use words to describe how you like it.," Humber said.
If he'd had more time to meditate on his thoughts, perhaps he would've come up with the following descriptions, used in official ICS cookoffs.
— TASTE - Taste, above all else is the most important factor. The taste should consist of the combination of the meat, peppers, spices, etc., with no particular ingredient being dominant, but rather a blend of the flavors.
— CONSISTENCY - Chili must have a good ratio between sauce and meat. It should not be dry, watery, grainy, lumpy, or greasy.
— AROMA - Chili should smell good. This also indicates what is in store when you taste it.
— COLOR - Chili should look appetizing. Reddish brown is generally accepted as good. Chili is not yellow or green.
— BITE - Bite or aftertaste is the heat created by the various types of chili peppers and chili spices.
Instead of worrying about all that, these judges simply picked up their plastic ware and dug in.
They kept notes on the back of what started out as clean, white, ballots but were turned in not-so.
Identified by numbers only, this year's chili cookoff entrants were Lance Booker, Dustin Dalke, Kimberlee Jost, Bob Previtera, Gordon Reiswig, Marisa Root, and a cabal of chili-makers called the "Chili Chicks," led by Barbara Nowak.
One at time, the judges ladled a spoonful or two into their bowls.
"It's really good. I like it. It's got a good taste," Alvarez said, of bowl number one.
Would you give it a 10?
Could you dance to it?
"I could probably do a good, old two-step on this one," he said. "It's very good."
Humber, the associate pastor of Parkview Mennonite Brethren Church, was at a loss for words to describe the unique chili taste in pot number two, but that didn't keep him from trying.
"It's very different. I mean it's like sweeter, tarter, spicier. It's really hard to describe," he said.
"Chili tasting is like a whole different aspect of human experience. It's got its own vocabulary. We're at a loss to describe it."
Humber's taste buds were reoriented traveling to 30 countries in 11 years in the Navy.
"I love eating food from different cultures," Humber said. "This is absolute gourmet compared to some of the things I've eaten."
Asked if he'd prefer to know what's in an exotic dish before or after he's eaten it, he said, "It depends. If it's a setting where I'm with native people, I try to be very gracious and eat everything; and I don't think that I really want to know."
He does know hot, though.
"In Thailand, they have kind of a standard soup that will just blow your head off," he said. "You eat it with a lot of rice, and you have bread nearby because it soaks up all that stuff."
Compared to all of the other entrants, the last pot of chili was surpassingly spicy. It caught the pastor by surprise.
"Oh, it's got a little zap to it, too," Humber said, choking. "Yea, that one talks to ya! Wow! Goodness! Woo-hoo-hoo!"
Elliott, vice president for advancement at Tabor College, and president of the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce, got his palate while doing missionary work overseas, in Guam, and Swaziland.
He came to the contest looking for Three Mile Island Chili, but finding nothing nuclear, pined for a bottle of Tabasco sauce.
"There's not too much chili in Guam," he said. "Not too much chili in Africa, either. Although they do have chutney in Africa.
"Guam has a lot of spices; sort-of oriental-type spices," he added. "Africa is more of an India influence."
Alvarez, who works for the city maintenance department, is a second-generation U.S. citizen. His grandparents immigrated (he used the word "sneaked") across the Rio Grande.
Growing up, everything he ate was distinctive and traditional, with beans, tortillas and such, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
He tries not to be picky, but he chuckles sometimes at what passes for Mexican food.
"When I go into a restaurant that says it's authentic, the authenticity is not there, you know?" he said. "I grew up with down-home Mexican cooking.
"I guess I shouldn't be that way, because people are trying."
Later, Alvarez exclaimed, "I'm done, they're all winners!"
He denied he was planning to run for city council.
McLinden, a real-deal cowboy who grazes a gazillion head of cattle on 19,000 acres, owns 14 horses, and wears a Stetson hat.
"This is the stuff I want to eat when I come in when I've been feeding all morning in January," he said. "This will stick to my ribs and get me warmed up without blowing my hat off."
McLinden was accompanied to the contest by his wife, Lori. He wouldn't let her enter her chili, for obvious reasons.
Because your wife's chili is far superior, and after tasting all the others, now you wish you would have let her enter?
"Of course!" McLinden said, preserving his 12-year marriage.
"Yes! Absolutely. Absolutely. None of it compares."
Lori wasn't falling for it.
"The chili I make is not real spicy, but he ruins it because he'll add 14 pounds of crackers and make it dry and pasty
"The first time he did that, I felt insulted, but I got over it," she said.
The judges took a few extra bites from one pot and another before penciling in their choices.
Wulf announced, "The winner of today's chili cookoff is Bob (Previtera), number six!"
Second place went to Dustin Dalke; and Melissa Rood was third.
Previtera, the Hillsboro city engineer, works for a company in Wichita called Reiss & Goodness, (pronounced rice and goodness).
There was no rice factored into his chili, but there was much goodness, and two kinds of beans in the pot he held, in the glory of victory.
"I've entered quite a few cookoffs where I just had to make it too hot to eat for me to win; but I didn't make it really hot today," he said. "I just made it to where I liked it. I figured that would be good enough."
The secret to his success is Italian sausage and sirloin steak, he said, along with the "usual marinade of jalapenos, onions and garlic, along with a little bit of cayenne to kick it up a little bit."
Another secret might be the way he let it settle before serving.
"I made it a week ago," he said. "Kept it in the refrigerator."
Local fans suggested he enter the contest, so he did.
"The girls in city hall asked me to," Previtera said. "I've brought them chili before and they told me I ought to enter."
Previtera received $25 worth of Chamber Bucks to spend in town; Dalke got $15, and Root $10.
Wulf hopes to add more prize money, and perhaps a trophy next year. After that, who knows?
"All we have to do is make it bigger each year, and maybe we could get international acclaim, and in 30 years it will be bigger than the Arts & Crafts Fair!"
As the judges posed for a photo with the smiling, pot-holding champion, one of them wore a brown splotch, a badge of honor, on his light-colored shirt.
McLinden wore his Stetson.
"The hat's still on, but my sinuses are open," he said.
