Suggestions From An Email, #1

Don't know if enough people have responded to make this whole thing viable, but I wanted to offer a few ideas. Borrowing from guidelines for other cooking competitions, here's a cafeteria list. Just ideas, take them or leave them as you will. Type of food - it would be nice to allow some lattitude for creative ideas while keeping within some type of structure. Perhaps something like everyone cooks one meat, one poultry, one vegetable item or everyone cooks one appetizer, one entree, and one chef's choice. This way everyone has room to showcase their best dishes - even if it comes to a battle of hamburger vs. steak, who knows, it could be a really really good burger. Food prep - prepped foods can be brought in(vegies chopped, meat marinated, etc) but everything must be assembled on site, ie; sauces have to be made on site, etc. AND everything should be cooked on the grill - no gas stoves, what have you. It is a grilling competition after all. Judging - Maybe two categories; official and people's choice. Official judging should probably be either an aggregate score of all items, or a winner in each category. Either or neither way guidelines for scoring might be based on taste, presentation, and creativity. People's choice - like in chili cookoff's - get's the winner bragging rights. Official judging might be more substantial or just more bragging rights. Like I said, just some ideas to mull over.Now, to voice a concern......... (the other shoe always has to drop, doesn't it :) ) The bigger and more public that this goes, the more costs go up. Park permits and insurance are going to be a rather hefty chunk of change and that's just the
beginning.

As each contestant has to pay for their ingredients and supplies, it would be nice to not get whacked over the head with a large entry fee. A fee is to be expected, but I'd really like to see it not go over $20 or so. My original thought was to just get together at someone's house and everyone has a few cold beers and cooks for bragging rights. (after all, beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy - and grilling is one of the reasons that god made beer)

It seems that folks would like to see something bigger. I'd just like to keep things within reason and financial feasibility. I'm now stepping off of my soapbox. Please let me know what I can do to help make this happen. It seems like a lot of fun.