We let our supporters write our chili recipe.
The 22nd Annual Chili Cook-off, hosted by the Rotary Club of The Villages at Lake Sumter Landing Market Square. Over fifty competing teams, alongside the annual Home & Garden Show, from nine in the morning until four. Tasting opened at noon.
Proceeds went to local community organisations and youth programmes.
Our second year entering.
You chose the ingredients
We put a form online with a long list of ingredients and asked people to tick everything they would put in if it were their chili.
Whatever came back, we cooked.
We called it the Buffalo Family Recipe, because it was not ours.
We did not win.
We saw a great many of our supporters, which was rather the point.
Kicks was there, taking photographs with anybody who asked.
We had a painting booth where people could work on canvases with us.
And we had the Buff Mobile — our mascot's golf car, from The Villages Golf Cars — set up as a photo booth with signs, which turned out to be the most popular thing on our tent all day.
We helped raise money and had a very good time doing it.
That is two years running at this event now.
This is the fourth thing our supporters have decided for this club. They picked the first uniform at the 2016 BBQ Bash, 229 votes to 146. They named the mascot in 2017 — Kicks, by nineteen. They chose the team beer in 2018, Sea Dog Blueberry.
And now the chili.
We did not win with it. We would do it the same way again.
