Given Sgt. Baconator's military nom-de-manger, we decided to come up with military-themed names. This decision, as with all decisions made regarding the Eatfiend blog, was done drunkenly. I am now the Commander-in-Beef, and Marcos will now be known as Private Porkbelly. I suggested Major Mayonnaise and Colonel Sanders, but alas, those didn't fly.
So my work closed for about 3 weeks during the Christmas/New Year holiday, and I immediately set out to medicating my Itchy Liver Syndrome. I got a call from Sydney, one of my coworkers, a few nights before I was slated to leave suggesting a Potluck! My crappy phone actually refuses to send a few of the pictures from said potluck, so the shots are a bit limited. Not pictured: The two bottles of wine and six pack of brew that I brought and subsequently consumed most of. Also not pictured: Me making a drunken ass out of myself. I'm thinking my name should be changed to Sgt. Shitshow.
I made shrimp with shiitake mushrooms in a white wine-cream sauce with saffron. It was the jam, except I killed the subtletly of the saffron and, well, everything with too much garlic. Now I know! Unfortunately, the best shots of it give me nothing but an error message when I try to get it off the damn thing.
Maximus brought beer, which is 1 of the 2 food groups, the other being barbecue.
Wait, there are 3 food groups. Pie is the 3rd. Azi brought pie, as well as her lovely self, who I never get to damned see anymore!
NOM NOM NOM. Speaking of lovely ladies, the only pictures of people I managed to snap are of this mope ramming pie down his gaping maw. That's nobody's fault but my own.
But enough of Berkeley. Let's move down south. I got into town and immediately came to the Larb Lair, also affectionately known as the ATM (Anna, Travis & Marc).
An 8 hour drive without a drink? I need a bit of the German Touch. This foul motor-oil-looking beverage is for some fucking reason the drink of choice for Sgt. Baconator, even though it makes him go fucking insane and have a horrible hangover every time. All this on top of it tasting like the Easter Bunny's Taint. There's a reason why I only took about 4 shots of Jager the whole time I was down, fellas!
Although I'm a little bummed we didn't push ourselves with a Jager-and-Cheese challenge, looking at the above picture.
Smash it on the sidewalk, scoop out the insides, discard on sidewalk.
Christmas eve is lacking pictures, but Colin (Major Midget) and Lord Billah (which Travis misspells as Lord Blah, and I will now dub Rear Admiral Rumproast) came over to my fambly's place. We drank entirely too much, then Colin and I decided to go to the liquor store for cigarettes and more booze. We came back with 4loko, which was the worst decision of my whole trip, as it gave me the most painful hangover I've had in recent memory. But I also bought a lottery ticket, which I asked a blonde girl in the store to kiss (Me: Kiss my ticket! Blonde's boyfriend: Kiss your WHAT?!). I didn't win the lottery, so I blame that bitch!
Anyway, onto the classy stuff before the shitshow continues.
The cocktail concept for Christmas with my family: The Southside Fizz. If memory serves, it's Gin, Champagne, simple syrup, and club soda (?) with lime or some such. My brother could correct me on this, but being a wise and tasteful person, I'm sure he doesn't read this shitshow of a blog.
For Christmas dinner, we did a gorgeous roasted brisket. My brother cured it for 5 days, and it was slated to be pastrami, but we forgot to do the pepper crust, so it turned out as nameless deliciousness. The salty, crispy fat on top was one of the most delectable and horribly unhealthy things I've ever eaten. Bad for me, worse for my brother, who happens not to have a gall bladder! A true trooper, he didn't let it affect him.
That night, I went back over to the larb lair. Travis decided to send everyone a Christmas card, which I regrettably can't find. I'm sure he'll post it up, but he decided to get naked next to his Christmas tree and put my Santa hat over his junk. I was with Mikey at the bar, otherwise I would have stopped it. Not to worry, I used their washing machine immediately afterwards, so the Santa hat has been sterilized and readied for next year.
We walked Mikey home, and Travis wanted to drink under a bridge in 45 degree weather. We said no, but he went anyway, then showed up at Mikey and Robbie's a few minutes later. He woke up Robbie, mind you at about 3 am, and decided it was a good idea to yell and fall backward into a giant, loud pile of recycling. It took us a good hour to get him out of there, but before that happened....
Travis took off his shirt and dumped an entire Newcastle on his head in Robbie's living room! God I wish I had more pictures of this, but Corralling Sgt. Baconator is like herding cats. Cats that are hammered off Jagermeister, shirtless, 220 pounds, and take everything you say as an insult.
An hour later, after sooo much effort, we got him home. He took a shower, woke up his fiancee (yeah, he's engaged, and it's not to Liver Disease), and attacked Pvt. Porkbelly and I while he was naked. He came out, his eyes met my wallet, and he grabbed it and tried to rub it on his junk while threatening "I'm gonna put your wallet on my dick!" I'm going to get that man a white dinner jacket to wear whenever he decides to get naked. Anyway, I managed to grab his arm before genital-to-wallet contact was made. This marked the second, and thankfully last time that Sgt. Baconator attempted to put my personal property on his junk. After all, what are friends for?
I took it easy for a few days after that, but sooner or later came the CHILI COOKOFF!
I tried to get fancy with mine, making my own chili with dried, toasted, and ground morita, puya, ancho, and negro chilies. Unfortunately, I didn't get enough chili powder in there, so it turned out pretty crappy, but this is the first time I've admitted it to the boys. I also wanted to do a bit of dark chocolate, but the only dark chocolate I could find in the area was only like 45% cacao, so it turned out to be a sweeter flavor than I wanted, and not chocolately enough. I was shooting for the earthy, smoky, rich combination of the chilis+chocolate+some smoky deliciousness from my chicken concoction. It was ok, but I was disappointed in it. Anywho....
Like a fifth-generation Swiss Watchmaker, Sgt. Baconator goes to work meticulously crumbling bacon for his bacon chili.
I braised some chicken thighs for my chili. Some of the smokiness I was shooting for came from these bad boys. I should have just served these fuckers and told everyone it was chili.
Chili a-cookin'. From left to right: My chicken chili, Marc's 3-meat chili, and Travis's Bacon-and-Chorizo Monstrosity Chili! I liked Marc's the best, for the record. He did bone-out short ribs, ground beef, and beef adobada. Everything simmered and got wicked-tender. My rankings, chili-wise, were Private Porkbelly, Sgt. Baconator, and myself, the Commander-in-Beef. Truthfully, though, there were no losers.
A few nights later we BBQed over in Klantee! Beforehand, I came over to meet up with my fellow Eatfiends. I was a few minutes early....
...So I enjoyed a brew on their porch in the mid-day sun. Probably the best 20 minutes of my vacation. Pure relaxation.
While Pvt. Porkbelly and I waited for Sgt. Baconator, I rewatched The Wire, which is the best show ever. No hyperbole here, nothing competes with it.
Billy was housesitting for his parents, so we headed out and went to the local Messican market and got some deliciousness. We did longanisa, Adobada, Carne al pastor, and made our own guac + salsa for the burritos, which devolved into tacos as we got more and more hammered.
As usual, I have too few pictures from this night...
Adobada + Longanisa. I'm a fucking idiot when I get stoned, so I burnt the sausages (rather, directed Pvt. Porkbelly to burn them).
One of the 2 things I didn't fuck up was the guac. Killer. Wicked-crazy-good.
Keeping the meat warm (FILTHY!)
We also pressure cooked a pork butt. I did a delicious dry rub on the fly and we cooked it in Negra Modelo and it's own porky-delicious juices. Cooked it at high pressure (I think the weight was +5 or +10 psi) for ~1.5 hours and it just fell off the bone. I know my way around a pressure cooker, even when I'm a stoned idiot. Weed and I don't mix if I need to do anything important.
As an aside, there is a sex-dungeon thing under this house. There's a small panel in the backyard that leads into an sketchy concrete dungeon about 5 feet tall that has chains on the walls and ceilings. I think the original owners of this house kidnapped and tortured people below. So, you know, if you're into that sort of thing, get in touch with Rear Admiral Rumproast.
Anyway, Pvt. Porkbelly and I crashed out for a few hours while Stinky and Baldo stayed up drinking all night. We went back to Casa de Stinkbald to nurse the hangover while drinking beers and watching movies all day. Robbie was nice enough to order us a Gi-fucking-gantic pizza to quell the hangover and the ever-persistent hunger that marks a true eatfiend.
It weighed about as much as a medium-sized dog, and tasted almost as good! Half this fucker and plenty of beers later, I needed a few days of recover before New Year's Eat.
New Year's Eat!!!
After a meeting in the War Room at Larb Headquarter Central Headquarters, we decided to head to some of the Asian Markets for foodstuffs in preparation for New Year's Eat.
Ah I miss Asian Markets! This was right across the street from my old apartment in city heights. Asians have a propensity to take the most ridiculous fucking shit and make food and drink out of it.
Got a nice fire going in the backyard...
I snapped a picture right as Kimi was doing her Charlie Brown Dance...
Private Porkbelly received a Deep Fryer for Xmas! Pictured here is the inaugural fry, chicken wings!
Classic wings with Frank's Red Hot coating, followed by...
Some unorthodox green wings with a coating of Yucateca Jalapeno hot sauce. These were my favorite dish of the night. Ri-god-damned-diculously tasty.
Three measures of deliciousness: Red wings, Green wings, and my shoe! Excellent photography skills here.
We had to do it, the deep-fried twinkie. I thought it was delicious. Absolutely killer. Jumping ahead, Travis wanted to make another one the next day, so he asked Marc how to make batter. Marc told him, and Travis substituted BBQ sauce in for the water. I have to say, that was the single most fucking disgusting thing I have ever eaten. Good work, Sgt. Baconator.
Anyway, back to New Year's Eat...
I got a big primal ribeye cut and got 6 delicious steaks out of it. Made a marinade that was... meh, not very good. I raided the Larb HQ pantries for some ingredients. The marinade ended up being too sweet for my taste, but the ribeyes were perfectly rare. Still fucking mooing, that's how steak is meant to be eaten. I also did some onion rings in the deep frier that were pretty damned good, though Marc saved them. They were good at first, but the tempura batter was lumpy and uneven, so he made a new batter that was all purdy-like.
The menu continued with things that I forgot to take pictures of: Deep-fried pickles, mozzarella sticks and all manners of ridiculousness. My brother made some egg rolls which he, as always, knocked out of the park. All around, New Year's eat was a success.
Then Travis drank too much Jager and freaked out. Anna's cry of "Party's over!" rang true after the Jager soaked every tissue in Sgt. Baconator's body. Do you even have to ask if he took his pants off? Of course he took his pants off!
So of course, the next day, in true eatfiend form...
Drinkin' and Apologizin'. An unintentionally uttered phrase, the greatness of which was recognized by Craig. This phrase describes our lives oh-so-well. Pathetic? Yeah. Whatever. Fuck you.
I woke up the next day and made a pedialyte and rum cocktail. Simultaneously causing and beating the hangover. Since peanut oil doesn't contain any electrolytes, and alcohol depletes them, I needed to give my poor body a break.
The next day we delighted in a Chargers victory over those half-cocked, sociopathically violent Raiders. Oh, my bad, those are their fans.
We also fired up the deep frier again. Here's Travis's conconction.
A tostada in which EVERYTHING is fried. Deep-fried tortilla, with guac and carne asada also deep fried, then drizzled with batter and fried again. This is the medical equivalent of eating an entire pig coated in cyanide and bleach.
Pat also showed up, and decided to keep going, deep-frying chewy chips ahoy. By this time, Pvt. Porkbelly was getting a headache from eating so much fried food. I have to say I was getting overload at this point too.
This is also when Travis did that deep fried twinkie in BBQ sauce batter. I just want to say this again, MOST FUCKING DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER TASTED. I'm not trying to insult you, Sarge, I'm actually impressed you were able to make something so disgusting that I can think of the taste now, 10 days later, and still cringe.
The next day, it was back to Berkeley. I had a great time, boys! I gained 12 fucking pounds over that vacation and I am disgusted with myself! Time to go on a diet because I'll be back in town for Spring Break, when of course we're going to have to fire up the deep frier for...
Eatster!
No comments :
Post a Comment