And The Winner Is??

Well, it's over and my liver is ecstatic. Two days of hardball drinking and partying at the Memphis in May BBQ Competition were well worth the price of admission (free, thanks Darell and Kay!) and I'm sure I shaved a year or two off my life. Hey, you can't live forever.

One special highlight was an impromptu tasting of various moonshines at another team's tent. They shall remain nameless as we wouldn't want the revenuers coming after them. They had several flavors and we tried peach, muscadine and some other one I just couldn't identify. It might have been because I felt like I drank battery acid after the peach one and for anyone who says moonshine is smooth has clearly never tried the stuff. Yet, it works. Almost too well!

Now to The Sassy Sows. Man, what a crew!

The competition was mighty fierce with approximately 200 teams competing in three divisions, whole hog, shoulder and the Sassy's forte, ribs. I saw some incredible cooking apparati with the most unique being a Belgian team's open pit, double spit that can cook two hog halves in about 5 hours. Brutally hot in the Memphis weather.

The Sassy Sows naturally do not need some over the top cooking equipment and they maintained a calm and steady flow of work throughout the day with their simple approach. 21 racks of ribs in two smokers. A piece of cake. When it came time to judge, the ribs were simply dead on perfect. Everything in it's place, right gals?

For me, I just continued to drink all day, filled with a calm satisfaction as I watched them tend to the business of cooking ribs. I asked each lady repeatedly throughout the day how they were feeling: confident, scared, concerned. . .they were cool as ice. As a veteran of culinary competitions, I know and can see and feel the confidence or lack thereof during these events. The energy is palpable. The Sassy Sows had it, they simply just had it. Not a worry or care in the world.

After the prelims were over, we waited. And waited. And waited some more until the decision finally came down. They made it to the finals with eight other teams!! As you can imagine, the all-female team erupted with glee and pleasure! I've never heard so much screaming and screeching, whooping and hollering in all my life. Yes, I whooped and hollered too! The excitement was infectious!! They had thirty minutes to get their business back together.

What had been an afternoon party in the tent turned into a madcap race to clean the place back up and get everything ready for the final judging. It was a collective effort by many, many people. Vacuuming, wiping, garnishing, plating and then they ran us all out on the sidewalk. Peanut gallery would have been too polite a word for us!


We sat by the river and waited for the judges who arrived promptly, which is more than we can say for the second judge of the preliminary round. He was thirty minutes late and shall we say a touch hungover.

The finals judges were greeted with the typical Sassy Sows hospitality, and attitude I might add. And in fifteen minutes, it was over.

We roused up the peanut gallery for a thundering applause chanting SAS-SY SAS-SY SAS-SY.

And as you can see we made quite the impression with one of the judges.


I like to think we played an integral part in the judges final decision, but you know even if we didn't, I'm positive the girls loved the support!

After the judging was over we moved to the stage area for the announcements of the winners in each division. After thirty grueling minutes they finally got to the rib category. And one by one the presenters rattled off the names. 9th Place, 8th Place, 7th Place, each name gone a little more excitement from the team. . .5th Place, 4th Place, still no Sassy Sows, 3rd Place and finally 2nd PLACE IN THE WORLD FOR BBQ RIBS. . .THE SASSY SOWS!








I'm really proud of my gals and wholly appreciate that they let me be involved in the fun. Congratulations ladies, you absolutely deserve it!