Thursday, February 24, 2011

my chili/music vision

well, thanks to my wife for making that amazing dinner on monday night - she has inspired my thoughts on planning a chili cook-off. my ultimate goal is to create a charity/promotional event where BCBM can provide a multi band line-up to entertain a large crowd of chili fanatics. the actual chili cook-off side is where i'd like to raise money for the food bank of the pioneer valley. the event date would be sometime in september/october at an outdoor venue during the afternoon.

this would be a legitimate NON-Sanctioned chili cook-off. the reason why i don't want to have it be a sanctioned Chili Appreciation Society International [CASI] event is that i want to allow the teams a little more freedom with the recipes. for instance in a CASI cook-off the rules restrict the use of beans - being a lover of all types of chili's, i would prefer to allow all types of entries to compete. matter of fact, i'd like to create some interesting prizes for specific recipes - like best veggie chili and most unique. 

i have a good amount of people who would love to put a team together - i'm thinking that list my diminish when they see the cost in ingredients, equipment, etc. i am thinking that i might be able to approach some local restaurants to enter as a team or sponsor a team to help them out. ultimately, i want to have the teams meet early and begin cooking on site - like at the sanctioned cook-off events. this is actually one area where i have run into concern from one restaurant owner when i had asked about this. that is an issue concerning the board of health. see - each team would be required to submit a predetermined amount of chili to our judging panel - the rest of the chili i'd like to have given to the audience of the show in the form of sample cups. not like a full cup of chili - just enough so that the crowd could get a taste of each them.

i also would sell tickets to the event and the proceeds of the ticket sales/admission would go to to the food bank. there's a short list of venues in mind too. the key is that the venue have an outdoor facility with a pavilion, and a bar. all of the cooking would go down outdoors and i would suggest the teams use a "turkey fryer" for cook the chili or use an electric burner or even a couple crock pots if that works better. 

my main point of contention rests on this health board thing. i feel very confident that there is a solution. i suppose i could work around it and lose the idea of cooking on site. i really would hate to not have chili samples available for the attendees. the amount of folks interested in tasting chili is nothing short of monumental - i can only have so many judges as well. 

we'll see what i can come up with. i know this would be a great time and a terrific opportunity to put some great musicians together in front of a large audience. essentially - i can do something good for the food bank while bringing the deep blues to the area. maybe i could even do a sampler of tunes for the event so that the audience can listen to the bands even after the event. 

lots of ideas - just need some direction and planning, then we'll get it rolling.

mmm - chili with a side of blues.

--
-Rob Charette 
Black Cat Bone Music ~ Drummer/Management for Damon Reeves