This year’s NMFFS (yeah it’s not an official acronym, but I don’t want to keep typing it out) had a very different feeling to it than in the past few years. With the event experiencing some growing pains, some effort was made to change things up to try and make things a little more entertaining for the attendees.

So who was behind all this? That would be John Hard, a.k.a. CaJohn. His idea to revamp the usage of the Dispatch kitchen area to take away the tables that usually had disinterested diners there during the events was brilliant because it allowed the placement of some well-needed hot & spicy foods vendors along with the judging area for the amateur competitions and for the contests. Someone had to keep working to make the money, as you can see Sue Hard doing in the above picture.

So again I was a judge for the amateur contests, one for salsa-making and one for hot sauce. As I commented to someone about what the qualifications of the judges were, I said “Well, we do it because we like the stuff.” Not rocket science, really. As you can see, the judging forms are not complicated either…although there should probably have been a place for aroma since some of them smelled pretty good (or bad.)

In the end, our own chilehead maiden Sandi Kraft walked away with the grand prize for her entry that actually dared to be a little bit spicier than the others. Kudos to the second place winner, whose entry with mango, peppers, and black-eyed peas made for a delightful fresh salsa that all the judges were quite complimentary about.

Unlike the hot sauce contest, salsa is a little more palatable (and abundant) for the crowd, so there was plenty left over for the throng of onlookers to try. As for the amateur hot sauce contest, I don’t have pictures of it since I was sitting there as a judge. However, Passow’s entry of his Trinidad Scorpion hot sauce seared the judges tastebuds so abruptly that I was forced to fire him from the blog at the end of that contest. After a beer or two at Gordon Biersch, I had recovered enough to hire his sadistic hot sauce-making self back again.

The chili cookoffs were back again, both for the professionals and amateurs. See how excited everyone looks in this picture? That’s not excitement, it is actually hunger. Maybe it was just gas. Who knows, but we definitely ate our fill of chili.

So what did the winner of the professional contest get? This fancy I-can’t-wear-this-robe-anywhere-else-but-the-North-Market robe, of course. Speaking of gas, Mary must have had a little trying to get out from her look in this picture. As for the winner cialis online of the professional competition, both Passow and I fail to understand what the judges felt was outstanding about it. For us, the hardcore chileheads, it was very…uh…”eh.” Of course we liked the spicier ones, but those just happened to taste a little better too.

Did we mention how great it was to have some new vendors in for the show? Johnny and Nicole from Heartbreaking Dawns brought a bevy of great stuff from upstate New York to share. Their t-shirts were pretty awesome too, btw.

Crazy Uncle Jester returned to his old stomping grounds here in Columbus to also wow the crowd with his stuff. Besides wearing the fanciest/tackiest hat ever seen, more people were scorched by his stuff than anywhere else…and the world is a better place for it.

We were also privileged to have a visit from Senator Cowboy George and his partner Bonnie cheap cialis from Blaze Gourmet out of sunny Cleveland, OH. As you can see, they were having no fun at all that day….;)

A newcomer to the world of industry shows, the very nice folks from Patter Fam brought their quality stuff for the show. I think they were a bit taken aback by the dedication and lunacy of the chileheads there, so we hope that they continue to keep coming to the shows.

The last item I will address for this post will be the jalapeno-eating contest. This was a new event for this year. Even though there had been pepper-eating contests before, this was better organized and better run than those. The object? Eat a plate full of 10 oversized jalapenos all the way down to the stem in a mere four minutes.

At the end of the time limit, there was a tie…with two contestants having eaten seven jalapenos apiece. So, we went to a sudden-death speed round with the winner being the one who could down the largest red-ripened jalapenos in the box. With seven of those in my stomach, I’d be lucky to even look at one of those peppers let alone eat one.

In the end, there could be only one. The one was Jeff Stevenson, a.k.a. Crazy Uncle Jester. Congrats to Jeff for eating more jalapenos than most of the other humans in the room could have done in double the time.

There was a lot more that went on, but I’ll let our intrepid reporter Passow write up the rest.

Suffice to say, this was the best NMFFS yet done…that we attended. Time will tell how this show looks next year and if it has room to continue to grow and evolve.