Audio By Carbonatix
Bathroom humor is common at most food-eating contests or cookoffs. Contest foods run the gamut from wings to sausage to pie, and all have a certain level of disgusting magnetism that makes people line up either to watch or join in on stuffing their gullets. But what of the event that encompasses pickled eggs, Ranch Style Beans and chili, the unofficial meal of Texas? Could an event be any more gastronomically challenging?
Traders Village takes the spirit of food-based celebrations to an unsurpassed level with the 29th Annual Prairie Dog Chili Cookoff and World Championship of Pickled Quail Egg Eating. Not only has it been called the “granddaddy of North Texas cookoffs,” but Traders Village expects more than 80,000 chili-crazed attendees of all ages over the course of the two-day event. Saturday features the junior-division competitions with culinary challenges for chefs ages 8 to 18. There will also be a slew of free contests such as team tortilla tossing, head-to-head team banana racing and an anvil toss to keep the crowd active before and after the qualifying round of the WCPQEE. Sunday is the big chili showdown.
It all sounds harmless enough. Oh, but no. Sure, Saturday has kids cooking and people competing in random games that you’d see on Games Across America. And Sunday has its traditional (albeit zany and spicy) chili cookoff with hand-painted, “appropriately inscribed commode seat trophy” and a championship round for gorging on pickled quail ova. And yet there remains an event that could take the whole thing down a notch into kindergarten humor and, dare we say, down the toilet (painted seat or not).
What we’re dealing with here is pretty serious. It’s something that few are keen to openly speak about and even fewer are willing to do in public. This issue, however, has no chance of suppression at Saturday’s Ranch Style Beans “Winner Take All Pinto Bean Blowout” for $500. We, too, were horrified by all the name implies. And while it might still be a good idea to hold our breath at the event, we breathed a big sigh when it was clarified that the “blowout” is simply a bean cookoff with a first-place prize of $500. Nevertheless, the generous bean company once again brings to the party the Ranch Style Beans International “Toxic Vapors” Bean Eating BLAST, and we couldn’t describe it better than Traders Village: “a violent release of confined energy usually accompanied by a loud sound and shock waves that result from contestants participating in a timed bean-eating contest.”
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All summed up and with maturity levels pushed aside, the 29th annual PDCC&WCPQEE is a weekend full of gratuitous consumption, bizarre competitions and, let’s face it, severe intestinal distress. And somehow the first two make up for the last. After all, for anyone who’s been privy to DISD or other school cafeteria food, this should be no problem. For the rest of the attendees, may we suggest buying stock in one’s favorite antacid and reserving a gallon of milk in the fridge to kill the fire after eating some serious Texas red. Once that’s covered, feel free to chow down and steer clear of open flames.
