My television viewing habits have bled into my hobbies: I started watching Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo way back in 2005 and subsequently threw up all over myself at the World Series of Poker and finished seventh in the Arizona Women’s State Poker Championship. I turned my attention to Miami Ink on Discovery Channel in 2007 and ended up in New Orleans with a fleur de lys tramp stamp.

Thank God I’m not a fan of Dancing with the Stars or America’s Got Talent… but I do watch BBQ Pitmasters on Destination America and Chopped on Food Network, so it came as no surprise to my sweet husband when I proclaimed, “I want to enter a gumbo cookoff.”

“Sounds good,” he replied calmly. I was surprised that he didn’t offer anymore pushback… until I realized he was probably more shocked than relieved that he hadn’t been smacked with: “I’d really like to start cooking pharmaceutical-grade meth in an underground lab.”

Or perhaps: “Man, I’ve got an itch to go hunt zombies with a crossbow.”

Or maybe even, “I’d just love to set Anne Burrell’s hair on fire.”

Hey, I can’t be the only one that’s ever had that thought.

Regarding cooking, I have always followed the maxim that you should have one dish that you can do better than anyone else so it can be your go-to contribution for potlucks, tailgates, hospital visits and wakes. Mine just happens to involve a minimum investment of six hours, a two-gallon cast-iron caldron and a destroyed kitchen.

I think we excel at gumbo because so few other people in Arizona know what it is, and in our exile, Pat and I have been forced to hone it to its most basic and outstanding elements. I can’t do much else – red beans and rice, grits, muffalettas – but what I can do typically involves beer and a side of rice (and I am terrible at cooking rice, by the way).

Pat thought we’d be entering the Arizona gumbo championships, which is hosted by the local Southeastern Conference alumni association. Now that my alma mater (Texas A&M, ’93) has joined his (LSU) in the SEC, I felt obliged to go all Johnny Heisman on the competition and decimate them, not unlike how the Aggies beat the hell outta the Oklahoma Sooners and the National Champion Alabama Crimson Tide… and really, how hard could it be to win the Arizona state gumbo championships?

Apparently it’s impossible – because they canceled the 2013 Arizona gumbo cookoff, effective February 15.

It was then that I turned my attention to my hometown: Shreveport, Louisiana. My hometown may not be the birthplace of gumbo, but it’s in the same general neighborhood and a high school classmate is chairing the annual Gladiators of Gumbo competition on Saturday, March 9.

I looked at Pat and said, “I believe this is what the young people mean when they say, ‘It’s on.'”

Pat said, “Good luck!”

My co-chef would not be joining me on the journey to the homeland for this epic battle of roux-based goodness – but that hasn’t stopped him from sharing his hard-earned expertise at every turn during my preparation phase.

I am told that our gumbo is outstanding – and this is not just from the Arizonans who try to mix it with our grits and our red beans and rice at our annual Krewe of Helios-Arizona Mardi Gras celebration. Come to think of it, these are the same Arizonans who think I should take requests from my parade float when they demand “purple beads, not gold ones!” at the annual Downtown Phoenix Mardi Gras Parade. (Hey, you’re lucky you’re even getting beads, pal! The other float riders in Phoenix seem to think these are 2-cent trinkets to wear and admire – not hurl at the begging masses)

Most Arizonans seem to think that our gumbo is too spicy, which may come as a shock to those of you living outside the Grand Canyon State until you realize that most people living in the Grand Canyon State moved here from places with winter, like Illinois… or the Dakotas… or Canada.

Suffice it to say, it’s not their opinion that counts – it’s that of the many Louisianans who have in fact told us that our gumbo is “the best they’ve ever had.” Pat and Stacy’s Gumbo™ has been Seen On TV… and has also been Featured in a Bestselling Cookbook (which I kindly signed when my sister-in-law was 5 minutes late to her booksigning). Rachael Ray (yeah, that Rachael Ray) even said that ours was the “funniest recipe” she’d ever read, although Valerie’s publisher did not reproduce it word-for-word in her cookbook because it encourages beer-drinking and is not written in the dry, scientific, sanitized language of modern American cookbooks.

Our gumbo recipe is so good that people who love us know they don’t want to be invited to our Thanksgiving table: They want to come over the following Friday to watch football and eat the rare and wonderful Thanksgiving Day Turkey Gumbo, which is like cooking a unicorn in a cast-iron pot. Our Thanksgiving Day Turkey Gumbo is so coveted that we’ve started cooking two turkeys on Thanksgiving – one to eat at the holiday spread and one for Friday’s gumbo.

It will be thus that I make for the Gladiators of Gumbo. Go big or go home… actually, I am going home, and my Mom and Dad and several high school and college friends have agreed to help me out since my co-chef is staying home. The Krewe of Helios-Arizona team will be competing in the Non-Seafood Category (grand prize: $400) and the People’s Choice Award (grand prize: $250). I have to win both to cover my costs because the plane ticket alone will wipe out the Non-Seafood Category prize – and there is no second place cash award.

We can prepare our proteins, vegetables and stock the day before. We have to cook the roux on site. Normally, we make a 2.5-gallon batch of gumbo over the highly controlled conditions of our Scottsdale kitchen. At the Gladiators of Gumbo, I will be making my roux outdoors over a propane flame – and I will be required to produce a minimum five gallons of gumbo. My pot holds seven.

I’ve put in a call to my cousin Jim, who has competed and placed in Cajun cookoffs, but my insight from uninterrupted hours of BBQ Pitmasters viewing has led me to believe that logistics will win the day.  We arrive for check-in at 6:00 AM, and we report our samples for judging at 10:50 AM. Doors open to the public for People’s Choice judging at 11 AM.

Thus I put together a timeline and checklist demonstrating a level of anal retention that might have shifted the earth’s orbit just slightly with the strength of my sphincter check. It’s three pages long.

I test it today on my first prep-cook – scheduled for high noon (winds out of the north, gusting up to 15 mph). Our full dress rehearsal is set for next Saturday at 7:00 AM.