What's Cookin' at Roundup?

Mosey on down to chuck wagon for good grub

By David Bowser
Correspondent

"He makes the best cinnamon rolls in the world," said Cutter Stapleton, president of Cowboy Roundup USA.

Photo by David Bowser Hot buns: Kevin Romines is rumored to make the best cinnamon rolls in the world.

Kevin Romines just laughed. He said they'll go to a competition like the one at Amarillo June 6 through 8, set up and then while they're waiting for the competition to get started, he'll make a batch of cinnamon rolls in one of his Dutch ovens.

"We'll hand them out to people when they come by," Romines said.

Since 1988, according to Stapleton, the best chuck wagon cooks in the world have been vying for the world championship at the Tri-State Fairgrounds in Amarillo the first weekend of summer.

The roundup will feature some 40 chuck wagons fighting for top honors.

"We're going to do our ice cream this year," Romines said, who lives just north of Pampa. "I'm going to win that this year."

He won the ice cream crank-off in 2003 at Cowboy Roundup USA with his homemade vanilla ice cream.

This year, he said, it will be a flavored ice cream, but he's not telling what flavor.

The Gayland Ward Wagon of Hereford won best overall last year followed by the C Bar C from Hartley County. The JA Ranch chuck wagon, the place where the chuck wagon was invented, came in third.

Kathy Christensen with her Quarter Circle wagon won year before last. She said she'd be back looking for another win this year.

"It was pretty exciting," she said of the 2006 event. "It was a very tough win. It was really exciting."

Last year at the Cowboy Roundup USA, Romines was second in the meat category with his chicken fried steak.

"We were third in bread," he said. "We placed in the top 10 in four of the five categories. We were tickled to death over that."

On Friday, Stapleton said, each wagon and camp will be judged for authenticity. That evening there will be entertainment, calf fries provided by the American Quarter Horse Association chuck wagon and ice cream from the homemade ice cream crank-off.

There will also be an exhibition of marksmanship by the Cowboy Mounted Shooters Association, which will return to Amarillo in November for its world championship competition.

On Saturday, the chuckwagons will be judged on their food — chicken fried steaks, sourdough biscuits, pan fried potatoes, beans and cobbler.

The dishes will be available to the public at noon.

Saturday will also feature demonstrations of Dutch oven cooking; chuck wagon restoration; saddle, boot and spur makers; horse shoers; junior ropers; horsemanship competition; junior cooks; and cowboy music.

Stapleton said there is a western vendor show and sale as well.

Sunday morning the chuckwagons will provide breakfast for Cowboy Church-goers.

But the highlight of the weekend for Romines, Christensen and the other contestants will be under the fly of their chuckwagons next to the open campfires as they prepare their western fare.

"His specialty," Romines' wife, Janet, said, "is fajitas."

She said when he's not cooking for competition, the crowds her husband cooks for ask for fajitas.

Three years ago, the city of Wheeler was having a big celebration, and it wanted a chuck wagon there.

"We got down there and set the wagon up and started cooking," Romines said.

He cooks his fajitas on a big plow disc using propane burners.

Romines said he looked up and the line waiting for fajitas was down to the next corner.

He said he just kept throwing meat on that disc.

"We ran out of tortillas and bell peppers," Romines said.

"My dad was down there, so he went to the store and got some more tortillas and peppers, but we ran out again."

By then the store had closed, but Romines' daughter, who lives at Mobeetie, knew the man in charge of the store so she got him to go unlock the store to get more tortillas.

"We fed about 600 to 700 that day," Romines said.

At the Mobeetie Hoe Down each June, he cooks fajitas. Last year, he fed about 300.

"A couple of years there, we did chicken fried steak," Romines said.

"Boy, that's a killer, trying to cook that many chicken fried steaks."

He ran out that last time he cooked chicken fried steak at Mobeetie.

"The first year we did the chicken fries, they just kind of estimated how many were coming," Romines said. "We got to the point where we were cutting those chicken fries in half because we were running out."

And then, there was the time that he set up in the old Wal-Mart parking lot in Pampa to help the Fellowship of Christian Cowboys by selling turkey legs. Romines said he knew he was in trouble when people started coming up to the wagon wanting fajitas.

"I'd tell them we had turkey legs today," Romines says. "They'd say, ‘No, we want fajitas.' The turkey legs just didn't go that well."

Christensen, who restores chuckwagons and builds sheepherder wagons and buggies, is the secretary of the American Chuck Wagon Association.

She said she's trying to finish up the association's second cookbook and get it to the printer before she heads to Amarillo for the chuck wagon championship.

Although she's including some of her recipes in the cookbook, she said she doesn't share her recipe for bread. That's a secret.

"That one I don't give out," Christensen said with a laugh.

Christensen has cooked across the country from California to Virginia.

A few years ago, she set up her chuck wagon in Apple Valley, Calif., for a celebration hosted by Roy Rogers Jr. They projected old western films on the boulders that night.

"I still watch black and white cowboy movies," she said. "If it's in color, I don't watch them."

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Posted: May 29, 2008