Epic weekend of cooking and debauchery

In honor of the super bowl, I embarked on my own weekend of superlative challenges: an ultramarathon of cooking, eating, drinking, running, and general debauchery. Well, the running was negatively impacted by the debauchery, but three out of four is not bad, I think.

Somehow friday afternoon I got roped into making pizza for a crowd that night at my house, of all places. For future reference, this is not hard to do:

You: "Hey, can I come over and you can cook for me and then I wont help you clean up?"
Me: "Sure! I always have time to whip up some pizza dough after work!"

4 pizzas later, when we were all drunk on mozzarella (aka wine), we missed out on our planned ice skating excursion. But, as we all know, you shouldnt ice skate until an hour after eating anyway, or else you might get a cramp and die.
Saturday was the hand-to-hand combat/extreme lugeing/pork segment of my cooking ultramarathon. I literally did not leave the house except to beg for kitchen twine at the restaurant on the corner (it helps to speak spanish).

My pulled pork sandwich adventure was truly a labor of love. It roasted for no less than 6 hours, filling my apartment with the smell of succulent pig and driving both me and Lorenzo nuts. While the pig was roasting I had time to take no less than 2 naps to gather strength for the final stretch of this epic challenge.

Roasting a pork for 6 hours may be enough cooking in one day for some people. But my many, many readers know that I'm about as normal as a chocolate covered grasshopper. So I spend the rest of a snowy saturday afternoon butterflying and stuffing a beef tenderloin (what, like you were actually doing something cooler?). Not only was this exciting, but I got to sharpen all my knives in preparation, and that always makes me feel pretty bad ass. My butterflying performance scored a 9.7 for execution, and a 10.0 for style, by the way. I stuffed that sucker with caramelized onions and mushrooms, and rolled it up like a huge... herbal cigarette.

Speaking of herbal, that twine I convinced the restaurant to give me was not what I was expecting. I dont think it was kitchen twine at all, in fact, I think it was the kind of hemp that wannabe-hippie-phishheads-in-high-school make into necklaces and wear to prove their cred at concerts while playing hackey sack. I was fairly sure that it would either  a) ignite in my oven, or b) make the whole apartment smell like weed, and further convince my neighbors that I am a bad influence on their children.

Luckily, the hemp did neither. I seared this gorgeously rolled and tied roast in my le creuset and then finished it in the oven. Served with polenta topped with broccoli rabe and pinenuts and copious amounts of wine..... perfetto!

You would think that after two nights of excess I would be all tuckered out. But no! I  rallied the troops and made it to a super bowl party, which was really a pulled pork party with the TV on. My sandwiches were perhaps more popular than I was, which doesn't bother me that much. Lorenzo had his first encounter with a cat, and I had my first encounter with a jalapeno popper. Both of us left feeling a little bit changed.