Salsafest!

Every year Redwood City has a Salsa Festival in the court house square (where most of the events we go to are). It's a huge event with three stages of salsa music, salsa dancing, dance lessons, tequila tastings, beer tastings, street fair and the best part...salsa tasting competition! Lucas nominated Mike to compete this year and the group talked him (us) into it. We were 1 of 10 booths competing for the title of people's choice, best hot salsa, best mild salsa (we entered into the hot category) and best booth decoration. The group came up with a Nautical theme and our salsa was called "Cap'n Mike's I'm on a Boat Salsa". If you watch SNL you'll understand the name a little better. Everything had to be made onsite and we had to keep everything extra clean because the health inspectors come through to make sure everything is being done to code. We were allowed to get there at 8am and needed to have a minimum of 6 gallons of salsa. The competition was from 12-5 so all of the salsa didn't need to be made upfront (you can continue to make it throughout the day) but since Mike fire roasts almost all the ingredients, and we needed it to cool down completely, we went at warp speed to have all the salsa made before the crowds started to come through. Our friends signed up for 2 hour chunks to help us man the booth (Special thanks to Sarah and Cary who were there from start to finish) and everything went beyond smoothly! Kendall even dressed up and helped out by giving me an amazing work out by being on my chest the whole day while I chopped, blended, peeled and poured. Of course I forgot to take a picture of her in her cute nautical outfit and headband I made. We ended up making around 10 gallons of salsa that morning!!

Throughout the entire day people were coming back to our booth asking us where they can buy our salsa. A few were pretty upset when they found out we didn't sell it anywhere! Our secret spy's kept telling us that our voting jar was one of the most full of all the booths. There was only one other booth that was even close. When it came down to the end of tastings, we were the only booth that had any salsa left - and not much! We cleaned up and waited for the votes to be counted. We ended up winning the best booth decoration (yay!) but sadly did not win the people's choice. We came in second, loosing by around 50 votes, and we also came in second by only ONE vote in the hot category. Damn, SO close!! It really was a great time and totally worth loosing out on the $500 prize for people's choice. Considering we gave out around 1000 tastings and only lost by 50 votes, I don't think that's too bad. We'll get them next year....

Here's a link to the San Mateo Journal that interview Mike for their article on the salsafest - http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=168102&title=Heat+seekers

Our booth!

Cap'n Mike imitating his creepy picture from one of the posters (haha)

Kendall and me doing the chopping and blending after Mike took the ingredients off the grill

Sadly the power wasn't strong enough to run the Cuisinart, but the blender worked so well we didn't really need then anyways :)

One of the giant buckets of salsa in process of getting filled up. We froze water bottles and sanitized them to float in the salsa to cool it from the inside as well. Smart huh?

Mommy and Baby girl (I think I look at lot like my mom here!)
A few of our favorite tasters! Michelle and GT :)

We made little anchor stickers to put on our cups so people wouldn't forget which one was ours and had two trays of salsa filled up at all times so we wouldn't get backed up when people came to taste. The green tickets are tasting tickets they had to provide us with before we have them a sample. That bowl was full by the end of the day!

Cary and Sarah - our super star boat/booth babes!

Another one of our favorite tasters - Mandy

Second round of boat/booth babes - Lisa, Karen and Jen

We were only allowed four people in the booth at a time, otherwise we would have for sure had the party booth! Our friends and additional helpers just hung in back or on the side and we took turns switching. It was super windy Saturday and it was WAY warmer in the booth.

The crew (minus Sarah) - Cary, Jen, Cap'n Mike, Shari, Lisa, Kendall and me

We went to the main stage to wait to hear the results and these guys were big winner's at the Chavez Spinner - free taco, pen, t-shirt, hat and apron! (Dave, Jen and Kevin)

Try to keep K warm, although she didn't seem to mind the cold :)

Yay for winning best booth!