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It’s a bit cooler this morning. Forecast is predicting rain later this afternoon. Today, I plan on spending most of the day sitting and relaxing, because I’m exhausted from yesterday.
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Did I do a live sales event yesterday? No. I took a class from the Pacific Northwest BBQ Association (PNWBA) learning how to be a judge for a BBQ contest!
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The class went from noon until about 6 PM. It was held in one of the buildings at the Enumclaw Expo center. And by “indoors” I mean in a barn-like building with a concrete floor, plain wooden walls that aren’t insulated, no heat, with the doors open with cold breezes blowing in. I was a walking popsicle by the end of the day and took several hours to warm up afterward. Plus, we were seated on cold metal chairs. There were about 30 people there, and about a third of them were women.
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The first part of the class was a master judge going through a slide show, talking about what is BBQ, what is the PNWBA, and how do you judge contest cooking, and other things. Absolutely fascinating for me! I learned so much. Not big stuff, as I already knew the basics, but nuances.
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The second part of the class was judging boxes of cooked meats, that other members of the PNWBA had cooked for us. So we were “seated” judges, while the table captains were all experienced judges, either master level (the highest level) or expert level (second highest).
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In addition to regular people like me taking the class, there were also pitmasters—people who regularly cook at BBQ competitions, who were there to see the other side of the contest, as it were.
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In competition judging, there are always six judges per table. For this exercise, we only had five people. At my table, three of the seated judges were people like me, new to everything, and two were cooks.
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The table captains led the judging. The first part of the judging is appearance. The table captain presents the box to everyone and you mark your score down for appearance, plus some comments as to why you gave that score. Then the table captains serve everyone a piece, and you get to judge for two other qualities: texture and taste.
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I took two bites of every piece—one to focus just on texture, then a second just to focus on taste.
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Once everyone had finished our judging, the table captains asked questions, what we had given for scores, and why. I was really pleased that my scores were in line with all the experienced people. I have a good palate and I cook a lot of meat. Particularly when I was able to correctly identify that the brisket burnt ends that we received were chewy because the fat hadn’t been rendered down enough.
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So I am now an official PNWBA judge. I’m considered a “noob” (it even says that on my badge). I won’t go up in rank until I attend and judge other contests. I plan on signing up for a few, so stay tuned!
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ION, some of the fruit trees are starting to wake up. The first to actually flower is the Asian plum. It’s a tree that has five different types of Asian plums grafted onto it. The one that’s started to flower is the one that always goes the craziest. Last year we had over twenty plums from this branch alone!
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In addition, my orchid finally bloomed. Generally it blooms the first week of February. It was really late this year. So I thought I’d show you the sequence of what a blooming orchid looks like.
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Here’s the start of the blossoms. You can tell how many flowers are going to be blossoming based on the number of little red pieces. So I knew that I’d have three flowers this year.
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Here’s the middle phase of the orchid blooming. It stayed in this stage for what felt like weeks, the flowers ever so slowly getting larger.
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Now here’s the orchid fully bloomed. I’ve moved it from under the bright grow lights to a dimmer place in TH2. The flowers will last significantly longer if they’re in a dim place. I’ve had them stay for months.
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Originally, this orchid was given to me because it supposedly smelled like chocolate. However, that scent has completely faded over the years, and now the flowers don’t smell like anything. That’s okay—they’re still beautiful!
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Later this summer I’ll do some work on the orchid. Right now, it has so many little roots outside of the pot. Orchids like having their roots crowded. They won’t bloom if they have a lot of space for their roots to grow. So I’ll remove one (or more) of the old sections of the flower and push most of those roots under the ground. After doing this work, the orchid may or may not bloom next year. We’ll see.
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Anyway, that’s what’s happening out here! Feel free to hit reply and tell me what’s going on in your world.
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Los Angeles. The city that never sleeps.
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These stories take inspiration from those hard-boiled detectives of yore, with broken noses and steely eyes. The white knight you could rely on because the rest of the world had soured like a rotten apple. Even if he (or she) didn’t follow the rules.
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Or maybe because they broke them in order to see justice done.
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Come see what the MCM Syndicate has to say about these types of “heroes” as we enter our seventh year of publication.
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MCM – So Criminal, It’s Good.
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And now for something a little different...
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For the month of March, Borrowed Time, a contemporary fantasy stand-alone novel by Leah R Cutter, is on sale for $0.99!
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Nightmares of drowning crowd Merilee's sleep. Deep, dark, endless water.
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They must mean something. She is a witch, after all.
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When three men break into her house, Merilee casts a transformation spell to escape.
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However, after turning herself into a cat, she discovers she can't change back.
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Worse things threaten not just her, but her older sister.
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Possibly nine lives won't be enough when dealing with dark magic.
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Borrowed Time--a contemporary fantasy from Leah R Cutter--explores what it means to be family, sisters, as well transforming into a superb specimen of a feline.
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Come enjoy the twists and turns of magic and a skewed world that Leah R Cutter excels at bringing to life!
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