Barbque Time!

This is moved from a story a wrote in January of this year.

I had the great pleasure to be a BBQ judge again this weekend. We have a small rodeo here every spring "Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo" that has numerous qualifying bbqs held for the chance at the prestigious honor of First Place Brisket, Ribs, etc.
I judged only bbq pork ribs. I could have judged brisket and chicken too but hey there was 138 entries. Enough is enough!
I had the honor of tasting 15 entries at my table and on a scale of 1 to 10 I had mainly 7s, 8s, and ONE 9.
The best round of ribs Ive ever had the pleasure to test.
The beer was free too!
Prizes for this particular contest ran over $10K so it was dead serious competition.
The winners of this get free entry into the even larger bbq contest at the main rodeo at the old Astrodome.
All for a good cause, mainly scholarships and bragging rights, both of which go far in this part of the world.
After the event while visiting different bbq teams under their respective tents I found out about a benefit for the next day for our local flower lady.
FYI, our flower lady goes from bar to bar each Fri and Sat night and sells flowers. Mainly roses. She has done this with for 20 years and it has kept her afloat due to illness and other bad luck that has affected her and her family.
As things go she wound up with breast cancer. Her insurance paid for surgery. Not long after that her day job closed down so she was left with nothing but COBRA insurance which is outrageously high and flowers sales.
Shes looking for a job now. The benefit was to tide her over and keep her electricity on, etc.
After, bbq, silent auction, live auction, cake sales, karaoke bids, raffle tickets, etc, we managed to raise 25K in cash in one day for her. I dont know the final tally but that it went over the 25K range.
This wont fix her problems but it will certainly give her some time to figure something else out.
Going home after two days of charity and fun it just occurs to me to be thankful for this great place Im in right now. Things can change in the blink of an eye but hey, as long as you got friends in this world all is not lost.
dc