Cocktail Confessions

This past weekend we celebrated my wife’s 40th birthday with a BBQ at our house. Not only was it a celebration of her birthday, but also a few of our neighbors birthday’s as well that all fell around the same time frame these past two weeks.

I’m not exactly sure how and when it happened, but it seems that our house is the goto house for parties as of late, since our other neighbor picked up his family and moved out to Texas last year.  See, we used to have block parties that spanned the end of our culdesac street that primarily centered out of his driveway and that of his neighbor. But now that they are gone, the street scene now tends to migrate down to our house. Not that I’m complaining. We enjoy entertaining and hosting cookouts. We have a corner house with nobody behind us, and a nice sized backyard. The only issue for me is I kinda do get tired of cleaning it up the next day. In that respect, I wish my neighbors volunteered their homes a bit more often.

So the main theme was somewhat latin in flavor. We decorated the house and backyard with Mexican themed streamers, banners, and cutouts.  Tacos, Spanish rice, ranch style beans, and margaritas were on tap, but these weren’t your typical tacos. I ended up making two different gourmet style types. The first were three large top sirloin steaks in a citrus-chipotle marinade that were cooked out on the grill and then cut up for easy service.

The second was a slow cooked pulled-pork shoulder that I had marinated in an achiote paste recipe served with roasted peppers and grilled pineapple. All the usual condiments were present: sour cream, shredded cheese, red onions, cilantro, various salsas and hot sauces. Monica happened to make a salad as well, and we had plenty of margarita’s, Jack Daniels, wine, and beer on hand.

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Listen to the podcast on how I prepared the pulled pork, and check out my earlier post on achiote paste and powder to know what it is and how to make. I can tell you it was delicious and I got some solid thumbs up from our guests.  I also discuss the preparation of roasted pasilla/pablano and Anaheim chili peppers (on the grill or in the oven), along with grilled pineapple.  I guarantee the added color and texture of fresh roasted peppers along with the sweet caramelized taste of fresh grilled pineapple bring these pork tacos full circle as a treat to the taste buds.

Monica did very well in the gift department as you can tell by the pictures, that is if you like alcohol as a gift. The more I think about it though, it may appear that by the amount of Crown Royal she received, one would think she has a problem. But I’m sure that Crown will be used up by everyone in future parties and I’m sure I’ll have a slug here and there.

As the night marched on, one of our friends Anthony found himself taking a liking to the Jack Daniels…perhaps a bit too much…and we had an entertaining ‘exit’ show as his wife (who drove) was rounding him up to leave.  There were plenty of hugs to go around initiated by Anthony, as well as multiple ‘good-byes’ and the almost wipe-out of our entertainment center which includes a 42″ plasma television, blu-ray player, stereo system, XBox and Wii gaming systems.

Even later when the natives got restless an impromptu session of Rock Band 2 broke out, with yours truly attempting to sing, and sing badly I did.  Girls took turns playing the drums and guitar and even singing.  Needless to say, there were plenty of pictures taken and all had a good time. 

The part at its peak was about 30 people strong, enjoying each other’s company, the outdoor fireplaces, drinks, jokes, games,and of course, food.  It wrapped up by 1:15am, and I did some preliminary cleaning until I finally crashed at 1:45.  The next day consisted of cleaning the house and resting.

Show Notes:

• Intro Song: Cumbia De Los Muertos (track 3) of the self-titled debut album, Ozomatli.
  

  Ozomatli

• Pulled Achiote Pork preparation along with roasted peppers and grilled pineapple.
• The Crown Royal Easter bunny.
• Anthony almost takes out the entertainment center.

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