Ah, but they are cute . . . .
Chili Cookoff
In no other neighborhood where we've lived have people held a community-wide birthday party for whomever decides to come, and coupled it with a chili cookoff. "Bring a pot of chili," they announced, "and whatever you want to drink, and some tip money for the band, and come on," so we did. Tom got Elizabeth's long-distance help on a good Texas chili recipe, and we made some outstanding chili, first concocting our own chili paste and rendering beef fat from a brisket that Tom cut up to use as the chili meat. It was excellent, as was Karen and Ray's entry, which they also made from scratch with the chili paste and all. Neither won the contest, which is fine, except that the one that did win was rather, in our opinion, pedestrian, with what appeared to be Rotel tomatoes thrown in and the regular old ground meat. Sour grapes, perhaps?
Yes, I am having fun with Google images today.Anyway, the event was great fun, and we got to meet some more folks and get in a good visit with Karen and Ray and enjoy the really good music.
33rd Annual!
Other Events
No photos of these, but I do want to mention them:
1. Tina organized a birthday lunch out for me, and I chose the Outrigger, one of my favorite local joints, the site of my favorite fish tacos and a great place to sit outside and watch the boats go by in the channel.
2. And that evening, Tom and I went to Star Cinema Grill to drink, eat pizza, and watch American Sniper. Yes, we liked it. As to the controversy over it? I like what the New Yorker had to say about it: it's an anti-war film, and it's a pro-war film. Not simple.
3. Super Bowl party at Debbie and Randy's: very fun and festive, despite the disappointing outcome. But what a great game, and what a great group of people! (I tried my hand at homemade pretzels for the party, and that was great fun. But something went amiss, as they have a slightly off, bitter aftertaste. I bet Elizabeth will know what that's all about.)
4. We're checking off our list of folks that we want to see this winter, some of whom we hadn't seen, literally, for years. We've had dinner with the Parkers and the Krells in the last couple of weeks, and we spent an afternoon in Sabine Pass with Art and Barb, and had Larry's curry at his and Courtney's beautifully-redecorated place. Great in each case to catch up with one another's busy, though largely retired, lives.
5. We finally replaced Gerrilynn's barbecue cooker with one that Pat had seen in east Houston. It feels good to get that off our backs, and Gerri seems happy with it. I don't think I've mentioned on the blog what happened: We were returning the pit to her one evening, months ago, when a tire blew out. Being fairly close to her house (and being naifs, I suppose), we left it, hurried to her place, and came back with Pat and a trailer, only to find that sucker gone, gone, gone. Hearts fell, but they have been lifted now that we found a good one that didn't set us back thousands of dollars. And we will never borrow this one!
And if you see this pit (Note the distinctive handle - it's a drill bit.), call the Baytown police, to whom we reported the theft (They called it a loss, not a theft --semantics.).
Enough for now. Wish us well as we become culinary ascetics for the next few weeks.
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