Ok, I Went

I stated the other day that I work pretty hard at not attending Railroad Days in Galesburg. Today for a couple of reasons which will be the subject of this blog entry I went.

Today was the BBQ Rib competition at Railroad Days. One of our friends was cooking in the competition and we wanted to go taste his ribs. Phil and Johanna are the fine young couple running Henn House BBQ. I think I've know Phil for a long time. He was on the Little League team I coached and is the same age as our youngest son. Phil's grandparents and now his aunt and uncle our neighbors to my mom and brother. When you have folks close like that you want to be supportive when you can. Phil and Johanna both have other jobs but are trying to make a catering business with their BBQ. You get clients by getting a good reputation. One way to get that is to enter and win local competition. We had heard his BBQ was good and wanted to sample some and judge for ourselves.

Here is Phil checking on the ribs in the cooker. Things are done now and he is just trying to maintain them while he waits for the time to plate and present them to the judges.

Johanna, Phil and Pat (Phil's dad) are getting their presentation plate of ribs ready. Everything is judged. Presentation, taste, sauce, who knew it was such a picky thing. It was our first attendance at a BBQ competition.

The fella in the blue shirt to the right is a judge. He is watching to see how the ribs are presented and to insure proper sanitation procedures are followed.

The preparation and hard work paid off as Henn House BBQ got first place from the judges and was also the people's choice winner based on fan tasting. We sampled from four of the competition participants and Henn House BBQ was clearly a cut above the rest.

The second reason we went was Frank F. Sidney's Western Bandit Volunteers bluegrass band was playing in Park Plaza. It was a short one block walk from the rib competition. Frank never disappoints. Great music and a fun group of young people. Who would think the 20 something crowd would love bluegrass music.

It was warm but still a great day to sit outside and listen to this group. Lacey, the young lady standing in front playing the washboard has a wonderful voice. All the members of the group are very accomplished musicians.

So I went to Railroad Days and I liked it. If they have things like this next year who knows maybe I'll become a regular at the event.