Our burnday was such a success that we just had to duplicate it. Not just duplicate it, improve on it! Kevin thought a pork shoulder butt would cook beautfiully in the pit, so this, our second attempt, included a leg of lamb, a pot of baked beans, several sweet potatoes, and a pork shoulder injected with a marinade and coated with a rub.
We burned, we buried, we waited. Our guests came. To great fanfare, we unburied.
Disaster. Nothing was cooked. No, I take that back — one sweet potato must have been in the hot spot, and it was done. Everything else was raw (if it was animal) or crunchy (if it was vegetable).
The only thing we could eat was a green bean salad (with sea salt), and we were reduced to take-out pizza as everything finished cooking it the oven. It was the worst dinner-party failure of my entertaining career, and now I need to find things to make out of a badly cooked leg of lamb and a badly cooked pork shoulder butt.
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