Comatose Competitors Forego Formal Judging

I think you saw this coming.

Yesterday, I showed up at Val's with three loaves of homemade bread, a vat of BBQ beans, a potato casserole, a six-pack of Hoegaarden, a two-liter of Coke, a chicken marinated in beer brine, and a bad attitude.

Little did I know that my scheming competitor had decided to make a cheap effort to impress the judges with excess. I had an Oven Stuffer about the size of a human head. Val had TWO, either of which could have passed for a small child.

We got the smokers going, and right away, the mighty electric started having problems. First off, it killed Val's power supply by overloading a surge strip (he claims). Then when we found a new outlet, it turned out I had covered up the probe on my thermostat, so the heating element kept conking out early. But we figured it out, and eventually, this is what we ended up with:

You're lucky I shot that photo during a lull in the smoke. All three smokers in the photo are going full-blast.

Val's dad, whom I thought was firmly in the electric camp, showed up and betrayed me by stating in Spanish that my smoker was good for people who owned "one-room apartments." Yeah, he was all buddy-buddy when he was eating my flan, but apparently blood is thicker than custard, because he is now slandering my marvelous smoker.

After dealing with sabotage, betrayal, and sub-code electrical work, I was finally able to relax. Val's friends started pouring in, and my friend Claudia showed up. We all sat around drinking and lying to each other until maybe six.

Val's wife Maggie and her minions followed my instructions and roasted ears of corn in foil, and they sliced my bread and made a huge pile of Texas toast. Here is what we ended up with:

That's just part of it.

In the end, I was sadly unable to vote for my own chicken. All the birds came out great. Tender and juicy, with fat squirting and dripping all over the place.

I can say, however, that I proved you can make decent smoked chicken with electricity.

If I had one improvement to suggest, it would be that the Annual Ted Bundy Invitational Smoke-Off be renamed. Something like "the Bi-Weekly Ted Bundy Invitational Smoke-Off."

Yeah, that has a nice sound.