Could you/would you eat a chilli?

I don't have photos of Younger Son coming home or of Daughter in Race for Life but I do have plenty of the cook-out.

It was a beautiful day on Saturday for the chilli cook-out. The festival was teeming with people all enjoying a lovely day on Gower. Twelve competitors, each with their own tent and cooking equipment were gathered and, come 12 noon, the cooking began. This was Elder Son's first attempt at a cook-out competition - unlike most of the other entrants many of whom travelled around the country and had won various competitions.

Sunday saw a complete change in the weather. Actually in this photo it doesn't look as bad as it was. As we were driving there in the middle of the day you could only see the approaching cars by their headlights. We being Husband and me. Elder Son had set off the site at 6.30 in the morning to get prepared.

Glazing the chicken with barbecue sauce.

After a tense waiting time Elder Son took third place (out of three). But still got £50 and a bottle of prosecco. 

For the chilli comp the rules specified that you could decorate it but no points would be awarded. Not sure if that applied to the barbecue too but the winning entry was pretty spectacular.

Unlike Elder Son's. He had concentrated most on the chilli comp and hadn't really through either the cooking plan or the presentation. But taste was jolly good.

He is already planning what he has to do next year to improve his ranking.

One thing he won't be doing is entering the chilli eating competition. This was the starting line-up, each holding their first chilli, a jalapeno.

The chillis got progressively hotter and each one had to be chewed before being swallowed, seeds and all. I stayed until one boy had been sick, and two others had come very close to it before deciding this was really getting too obscene and left so I'm not sure who won but I know all would have suffered majorly later on. Can't really see that the fleeting glory would have been worth it.

A momentous weekend

This has been a momentous weekend for each of my children - and thus for me.

Daughter took part in the 5K Run for Life in Exeter in memory of her friend, a mum of two young children, who died last year. It was Daughter's first entry into the world of event running since taking up running less than a year ago so it was a challenge for her and one she successfully completed - when she finally realised the siren meant the race had begun - in spite of all her last minute panicking and stressing.

Elder Son and his family are staying with us for a few days, partly so he could enter the Gower Chilli Festival Cook-out, which this year included a barbecue competition for the first time as well. So he's spent most of the weekend in a field in Gower sweating over a hot smoker. (He couldn't get his barbecue apart so had to do all his cooking on his smoker that we'd already brought back from Surrey with us on our last trip there.)

He came 9th out of 12 entrants for the chilli and 3rd for the barbecue (out of three!) so although a little disappointed with the chilli result he's learned a great deal from the competition and the other contestants many of whom were old hands who've won a variety of competitions before.

Being completely unbiased view Husband and I thought his chilli was the best. One of the judges said it tasted and smelled burned - a complete nonsense! It was smoky but not in the least burned and I am very sensitive to anything that has a burned flavour. Ah well, just another person to add to my 'one day I'm going to slap them' list.

For the barbecue challenge entrants had to cook ribs and a chicken and another item of choice. The judges declared Son's chicken to be the best but his ribs let him down. Also the judges - I don't know where they get them from honestly - kept saying everything was too smokey. For his freestyle he did short ribs beef, which looked black but were delicious and perfectly cooked (I thought).

Presentation might have let him down a tad ...

And the winning entry ...

Meanwhile Younger Son left the Perhentian Islands, Malaysia, this weekend for the last time (possibly). With his data collected for his PhD research he is flying back to Italy to be with Nuora and wait for the birth of their first child in late August. 

It's been a long six month separation for them and an even longer and sometimes very hard three years of Blue Temple Conservation. 

I am incredibly proud of my three children not for what they have or haven't achieved but for who they are. And I love them heaps.

Cricket-eating, sand-sculpting and ice cream

With Uncle still in hospital life this week has had to include factoring in visits. On Monday there was a rumour that he was being moved to Singleton - much closer to us - but it came to naught. Visiting him though has become like a game of Find the Patient, as he's changed location 3 times in 3 days. Where he'll be today is anybody's guess.

Around that life has gone on as normal. Except for one thing: for the first time for as long as I can remember I didn't make a cake for Zac's because I didn't have time. Fortunately a good angel left some cakes on the doorstep. (Honestly, anyone could poison us as we eat anything that's left on our doorstep.)

It was my turn to lead bible study in Zac's on Tuesday night. A child fully committed to being a Terrible Two looked like making the study impossible until the wonderful Golly offered to take him for a walk. A new visitor asked if he was allowed to express his views. I told him, 'Yes, of course, everyone can as long as we all respect each other and don't talk over each other.' Unfortunately he didn't catch what I said as he was too busy talking over me. After a bit of this, the equally wonderful Andre suggested the two of them could go outside for a chat, and we all breathed again and enjoyed an interesting study with lots of contributions and comments. (And at the end the young man came back in and was grateful for a tent, blanket and food as he was sleeping rough.)

Afterwards one of the young women present said, 'I always enjoy it when you lead as you're so relaxed and it's calm.'
I looked behind me to see who she was talking to.

Wednesday I took two grandchildren along to Sculpture by the Sea, a free workshop on the beach. I was in my element - and did most of the work - but GrandDaughter1 enjoyed it. GrandSon2 soon got bored but the whirly ice cream with flake, rainbow sprinkles and chocolate sauce made it worthwhile.

We made a fish, turtle and starfish. The artists leading it were encouraging us to be biologically accurate, adding a tail to the turtle and checking we had the right number of legs on the starfish. I'm not sure how anatomically correct they were in their sculpture of a dragon though.

Thursday and it was women's bible study at Zac's. Did I mention that we had a barbecue on the beach last week?

Oh, nearly forgot, last weekend we went to the Gower Chilli Festival again ... and I ate some crickets.

I blame this very persuasive man. He described them as being like savoury sugar puffs. As long as I didn't look at them I could do it but they weren't particularly delicious. As 'they' say insects will be the food of the future I hope they devise more interesting ways of serving them. Maybe coated in some of the Bourbon, bacon and maple syrup chilli jam he was also selling.

I'm sure more than that happened this week but I don't remember ...

There's hot, hotter and really getting silly hot

It was the Gower Chilli festival yesterday and I decided that rather than be boring as we usually are we should make an effort and go along. So we did.

That is, we went after Husband had spent two hours trying to set up a Facebook account for himself. He's resisted the temptation up till now - in fact he didn't find it a temptation although he always read my page - but a few things had happened that had made him decide to enter the world of online friendship, most particularly the opportunity to re-establish contact with a friend he hasn't seen or heard of since our wedding.

So, the chilli festival. It's the second year it's been held and obviously focuses on the wonder of chillis.There were plants for sale, all kinds of relishes, sauces, beers, chocolates, even welshcakes with a hint of chilli as well as hot food and craft stalls, and a freestyle chilli cook-off.

Each competitor had his - now I come to think of it they were all men albeit with lovely lady assistants - own tent and had to provide the means of cooking as well as everything else he needed and had four hours to prepare and cook a pan of chilli, which was judged on flavour, colour, afterbite and general all-round chilli perfection.

The winner goes forward into the British finals and the winner of that gets an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas for the World Finals. Last year's winner was hoping to repeat his success with his secret recipe that includes figs and all sorts of interesting ingredients. 

This gentleman told us he has his own freezer to accommodate his love of offal, which he was incorporating into his dish.

 

While some of the competitors were highly motivated and fanatical about the subject others took it more casually.

We had george with us so couldn't hang around for the judging. We also didn't have much money, which turned out to be for the best as we might have got carried away on the cheese stall. As it was we ended up bread and cheese for dinner.