Ribs Within had a crazy month of September! Coming on the heels of my food fest vacation in Vancouver, BC, we immediately started our Destination BBQ Tour of the USA – 4 events in 4 states in 4 weeks.

Pig Island, Governor’s Island, NYC Sept 1 – We received 4 whole pigs from Jimmy Carbone, of Jimmy No 43. We carved out the shoulders and hams for pulled pork, and smoked the bellies for BACON. We served 1000 portions of pulled pork over Bok Choy, and 900 tequila Mango pork belly shooters. It was a great event on a picture perfect afternoon.

BBQ & Blues in the Park, Mt Holly, NJ Sept 8-9 – KCBS BBQ contest in South Jersey. Despite a heavy rain that fell all day and night Friday, the cook went smoothly for us and we took a 3^rd in Chicken and a 1^st in Brisket for a 3^rd overall. If not for some mediocre ribs, we could have won the grand.

Meatopia West, Eat Real Festival, Oakland, CA Sept 21-22 – Ribs Within went west, as we cooked Lamb shoulder over Bok Choy to 800 people on Friday night and cooked in a Bare Bones contest featuring, pork ribs, beef ribs and lamb ribs against Chris Lilly and 7 of the top cookers from the Bay Area and beyond. We finished in the middle, but we had a blast anyway!

JK and DK

The Best BBQ Chef Competition, New London, CT Sept 29-30 – Another KCBS contest, our last of the year. It was a dreary, cold, rainy weekend from the minute we got there to the minute we left. We cooked like we were hung over from travel, as we finished 9^th out of 18, in a really touch field, that included 10 teams who had won a contest and 5 who had Jack Daniels appearances. 8^th in chicken and 6^th in brisket is all we could manage.

And with that we ended our year – wet, tired, and really happy for what we achieved.  We got more consistent and really got it rolling. We ended up 243 in the country out of 6300 teams in KCBS. 212 in chicken, 264 in Brisket, 316 in ribs and 317 in Pork.

We look forward to a GREAT 2013…

Smokem’ if you gottem’

Doug