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MOSES LAKE — Greenpoint Technologies engineer Gary Neu walked away with $100 and some serious bragging rights at the company’s annual chili cookoff April 27.

“My reliable meat pimps at Ernie’s (Quality Meats and Wine) came through for me again,” Neu said.

His chili wasn’t very spicy, he said, just traditional.

“Just a good, solid, basic chili,” he said. “I’ve learned through the competitions that you have to cater to a very neutral element … If it even looks hot (people) will run and hide. There’s bell peppers in there, so it’s got a good color, but it doesn’t really have much heat.”

Greenpoint, a company that does custom interiors for private planes, has held chili cookoffs for its employees for years, but this is only the fourth year that the company has invited judges from outside the company. This year’s judges were all from the Port of Moses Lake: Executive Director Dan Roach, Facility Director Milt Miller, Airport Director Rich Mueller, Executive Assistant Bonnie Peterson and Commissioner Darrin Jackson.

There were nine different chilies laid out in slow cookers along a long table, with cheese, sour cream, avocados and other toppings at the end. Some, like Neu’s Cooper’s Revenge, were traditional pots of red with meat and beans, but Administrative Assistant Amy Ward’s perennial entry, Always a Bridesmaid, was a cheesy white chicken chili so named because it had taken second place the previous two years, and Rick Maser’s Just Chilly had a number of innovative ingredients.

“It had one cup of strong coffee,” Maser said. “Apple cider vinegar, baking cocoa powder, brown sugar … coriander, cinnamon, cloves and allspice.”

Perry Waricka wasn’t as reticent as Neu; his chili was made with peri peri sauce, which uses bird’s eye peppers about 13 times as fiery as jalapenos. His Peri Peri Perry chili was toned down from what he would ordinarily make, he said.

“Personally, I can go way higher than what I did,” he said. “I can take a decent amount of heat, but I also know that not everybody else can.”

The judges served up a ladle full of each chili and took them back to their table to savor as the employees followed them through the line. There were also three corn breads to mellow the chili, and Neu had brought a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls as well.

“We have kept this completely anonymous,” Mueller said before the judges excused themselves to deliberate. “So you’re not going to know whose tires to slash.”

There were trophies and cash prizes for first, second and third place, and each winner could choose a prize off a table as well. Besides the $100, Neu’s first place chili brought him a brand new deer camera, plus $25 and a cooler for the best cornbread. Second place – $50 and a pair of binoculars – went to Julio Perez for his Mexican Chili. In third place, Ben Rathbone won $25 and a box of golf balls for his 100% Homemade Chili.

How homemade was 100%? Not very, apparently.

“I (used) some beef broth and about six cans of Wendy’s chili,” Rathbone said.

    Greenpoint Technologies employees help themselves to nine different kinds of chili at the company’s annual chili cookoff April 27.
  

    The chili chefs and judges, from left: Dan Roach, Julio Perez, Milt Miller, Perry Waricka, Amy Ward, Ben Rathbone, Rich Mueller, Ella Yevchuk, BP Powell, Bonnie Peterson, Gary Neu, Darrin Jackson and Rick Maser.