Tuesday at the Table

It all started innocently enough. We were out of espresso, and since we use it pretty much daily, we decided to walk up to the Starbucks near our home. Except between here and there, we saw a large crowd gathered underneath an umbrella-covered "garden" just outside Special Brews. It was a chili cook-off!

Well we hadn't eaten lunch yet, and gee whiz, who can ignore fun like that? So we paid the suggested donation, had our wrists tagged with neon bracelets, and joined in!

First up was a pretty expansive list of brews on tap - representative of each chili chef's brewery.

Then on to the chilis themselves.

In between tastes, I held down the fort at our table while hubby ventured off to get the next sample. Obviously, he was asking each chef what made their chili special, as each time he came back, he muttered a very brief description. Phrases like "5-chili", "porter-marinated tri-tip", "smoked brisket", "no meat", and "buffalo and peanut". Whoa. Interestingly enough, after an afternoon of voters spoke, the best chili and best beer honors went to Schofferhofer and their Grapefruit Radler.

So our routine outing took an unexpected twist. And we didn't mind a bit.