If you're in a fiasco, you might as well make spectacles of yourselves

So, apparently, if you invite everyone who came to your first Big Bear Game Night back for a second, they will actually play games! I sat out the session of Cartagena because I had to put dinner together. But I insisted on a game of Fiasco, a cooperative storytelling game I've been itching to try since JB first mentioned it.

Mohrkopf wanted to do bad accents, so at his insistence, we chose the setting "small Southern town"--and then he forgot to cop a bad Southern accent. Speaking of cops, he played one, a church elder who had a disastrous fling with the pastor of the Peace Haven Church. That was me. Unfortunately, my demure Southern belle of a wife [JB's husband] didn't take kindly to that, because she knocked me unconscious and had the gardener [JB] dump my body off the church pontoon boat to be devoured by the alligators. But my illicit lover pulled me from the water in the nick of time and hid me in his shack while we plotted her comeuppance, his former confederates taking advantage of our absence from the scene to turn the church basement into a gambling den.

It all came to bloody end. Beulah looked at the fallen woman she had become and realised her ruin began the day she surprised us breaking our backs "working on the boat" as we did several times a week. So she took the kitchen knife, drove to Elder Hebert's home--and stabbed the pastor fifteen times when he opened the door to greet his man. He in turn returned to find her sobbing over the body, consumed by remorse, and impulsively shot her through the head before driving to the church to take out his perfidious former partner [Mohrkopf's SO], the church treasurer. His quiet life in Pixley shattered, Hebert hit the road and unexpectedly found love at the next truck stop. Meanwhile, the gardener, Pablo-Jesús (a.k.a. "Pab-low Jeezus") absconded with the money and stepped quietly into my shoes as the new pastor.

In short, a fun time was had by all. My only complaint was that about half the participants were more comfortable describing scenes than acting them out. Put my old RPG buddies in their seats and I think things would've really come to life. But that's a quibble. Everyone loved my food (which may or may not have been influenced by the fact that we nearly killed the bourbon keeping them in Manhattans) and I got a chance to create more willing victims of Max Raabe and the Kransky Sisters. Such a shame I can't see scheduling another one of these before January!

Chipotle, eat your heart out!

Dinner, incidentally, consisted of homemade carnitas. Yes, you heard me right! I've been interested in trying the recipe ever since it appeared in Cook's Illustrated over two years ago. It's dead easy--a bit messy in its final stages, but totally worth it. Basically, you chunk the pork and throw it into an oven-proof pot with seasoning and rather little liquid. Once the meat it tender, you strain it, tear the chunks in two, and reduce what's left. Pour that on the meat and spread it on a rack under the broiler to crisp the bits of fat clinging to it. Still, they're so much less fatty than ordinary carnitas (which are typically deep-fried in oil) that they practically count as health food.

Inspired by the dress-it-yourself pizzas on Halloween, I set up a taco bar with sautéed peppers and chayote, Oaxaca cheese, raw onion, fresh cilantro, guacamole, pico de gallo, and crema. I forgot to bring the heat, but fortunately JB didn't; he presented me with a jar of pickled jalapenos that were summarily chopped and added to the line. (Damn! The near rhyme of "line" for "lime" reminds me that I failed to put any of those out, despite having stocked up on them for cocktails--unnecessarily, as it turns out.) To my surprise, we didn't run out of anything--a recipe that "Serves 6" actually served six.