A few weeks ago, She Who Shall Not Be Named got a hankering for foods we would usually only eat at certain camping events – pickled sausages, fire-roasted pork, smores – you know, the good stuff.
We were both missing some of our camping crew so we organized a mid-winter mini/backyard version and invited the gang around. Alas, degenerate WW couldn’t make it but he did send his homemade pickled eggs and sausages.
I didn’t have time, tools or supplies to build a fire pit of my own, so we picked up the best looking one we could find at Home Depot and put degenerate DN to the task of getting the fire going. Soon we had people huddled around sipping hot rum and telling tall tales as if we were out in the woods somewhere.
Laugter and faces emerged from the dark, occasionally followed by a mug in search of a refill. New people appeared, others snuck off, soon I lost track of who was there and who wasn’t. (I didn’t want to use a flash, so I didn’t get pictures of the vast majority of our guests. Two days later, I’m not even sure who was there.)
Eventually the oven timer went off, i.e. I’d gotten a buzz and it was time to pull the pork loins and veggies out of the fire.
Oh yes.
Two kinds of pork – one stuffed with jalapenos and poblanos and dusted with red pepper, the other stuffed with garlic and onions and a hint of rosemary, both wrapped in bacon and cooked in the coals. Roasted peppers, zucchini, and other veggies completed the meal. Thanks to degenerate SG for the braised kale (which somehow I missed entirely. Ah well.)
More comings and goings, dissappearances and reappearances, empties piling up in the recycling bin, laughter getting ever louder – you know, good times. Eventually it was just degenerates DA, myself, and CD digging for the last pickled sausage.
Sometime around 3AM the couches were covered in snoring bodies and only DA and myself were left standing, trying to resist tossing more furniture into the fire.
For breakfast, I whipped up cardamom-spiced French toast and more bacon, neither of which helped my vicious hangover in the least. With the thermos full of hot rum going around, I had neglected to drink so much as a sip of water all evening. Even a trip to Pho Dai Loi couldn’t resurrect me enough to want to attend various events that night. It would be another day before we’d finish cleaning up the mess (and my liver would clean the mess out of my system.)
