Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Festival will offer some thrilling grilling
Lions Club holds Crestwood event
By Andrea Uhde
auhde@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
First came the Big Green Egg. Then came the chicken.
Mike Stone of Prospect spent $700 on a charcoal grill called the Big Green Egg a year ago, and he's become a meat-cooking machine.
"We've become grill fanatics just in the past year," said Stone, who tosses chicken, ribs, beef and pork on the egg-shaped smoker and lets them sit for hours. "Before all this, I really hadn't done any kind of true barbecue."
But he's ready to test his skills by competing for the first time during the South Oldham Lions Club BBQ and Bluegrass Festival in Crestwood this weekend.
Stone will be up against 27 people from six states. They'll start cooking Friday night and finish by noon Saturday. That's when a panel of 35 judges will taste their efforts.
Contestants normally don't sell their food, but there will be vendors selling all sorts of barbecued meats during the two-day festival, which starts at 5 p.m. Friday.
There also will be bluegrass music, arts and crafts vendors, inflatable slides for children and plenty of other foods, such as nachos and cheese, hamburgers and hot dogs.
Tom Temple, who organizes the event, said he expects 3,000 to 5,000 people.
The festival, in its fourth year, raises money for the South Oldham Lions Club, a 50-year-old service group that performs eye exams on children and buys eyeglasses for indigent people, among other projects.
The cooks enjoy spending a night over a smoky grill, talking barbecue and making friends.
"I want to go around and talk all I can and ask questions and actually learn more about the ins and outs of competing," said Dale Perry of Centerfield, another cook who is new to the competition. He said he has six or seven smokers at home.
Perry said he'll bring four smokers and about 100 pounds of meat, and he'll end up spending $1,500 on the weekend.
"I know, I'm bad," he said. "I'm like a little kid whenever I get into something."
He hopes to win some money but admits: "I'll probably come in last."
The winner receives $1,800 and gets to enter the American Royal Barbecue competition in Kansas City.
"It would mean a lot to win anything against these kinds of people," Stone said.
Even if he doesn't win, he said, he gets satisfaction out of grilling.
"It's nice to be able to say, 'Yeah, I made that,' " he said. "Something about grilling feels -- maybe it's more manly. It's more acceptable for a guy. I like the things that cook overnight because when you get up early in the morning, it's just you. It's very quiet and still."
Reporter Andrea Uhde can be reached at (502) 582-4663.
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