The Cecilnomicon: DEVOUR THAT!! Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?? FLESHWORMS!

Fleshworms haunt the Realms Beyond seeking poor travellers who have wandered far from the path. Now thanks to this recipe, you can turn the tables on the little buggers and eat them instead of the other way around!

Ingredients:

• One Pork Tenderloin
• Two Forlorn Hopes
• One Package Bacon
• One Sleepless Night
• One Jar Applesauce
• Screaming, Screaming, Screaming
• Dry Spaghetti

Implements:

• Grill or Oven
• Blackened Stone of Abdul Alhazred
• Ritual Kitchen Knife
• Cursed Brew

Implications:

• Hunger
• Maws Chewing, Chewing
• Fullness
• Regret
• Hunger Reborn

Assemble:

Slouch down to your local Food Shoppery. I recommend a 24 hour establishment so you can wander disheveled through the aisles at 3am in the morning, but I’m a traditionalist. Anywhere with a decent butcher will do. You’re looking for pork products, but avoid the long pig - that’s probably more involved than you want.

Check the pork tenderloins for heft, freshness, and personality. I find singing to them works well, as does holding them up to your ear and giving them a squeeze. If it whispers a secret about someone you know to you, put it back - nobody likes a blabbermouth, even for dinner.

Don’t just grab the first thing with a picture of bacon on it. Due to the ongoing fad of making almost everything bacon-flavored, chances are it’s not bacon and is probably dishwashing detergent or something. Go to the aisle with the actual bacon and get some there. Look for nice wide strips. Avoid Canadian bacon unless you’re some sort of communist and if you are then I don’t know, man, I just don’t know.

Applesauce is optional, but if you have a source of home-pummeled sauce where each fruit has been hand punched by an ex-orderly from the local asylum who has seen too much that he can’t explain to keep working there and has to get his aggression out somehow, go for it.

Prepare:

First, set up your Cooking Circle and say the correct chants in the correct order. Toss salt out the window and thank your ancestors. Sway slightly on your feet and think about the dream that kept you up all night. Who was that figure? Why did they have your face? Will they give it back tomorrow night?

Next, lay out the tenderloin on a strip of wax paper. Feel the various germs and bacteria that cover all food seep into your pores. You are now unclean. Carefully wrap the bacon around the loin. Turn to your significant other as you do this and say in a husky voice that you are wrapping your loin in bacon just for him/her. You will get a scowl. This means it is working. If you have no significant other and are just making pork dishes to fill the hole in your heart, you can use one of your Forlorn Hopes now, just avoid getting too many tears on the meat - the bacon is salty enough. Continue to wrap the strips around the meat like a barber pole, tucking the end of each strip into the one before it so no tenderloin is showing.

Once done, place your wrapped meat log into the freezer. You can also put the tenderloin in there. Pick which end will be the head of the Fleshworm and place the Blackened Stone before it. Go about your life pretending to be normal for a few hours while the tenderloin freezes.

Now venture outside and bring your altar of flame into life. If you are using a grill, you want a medium heat (~350 degrees or so) and if you are using an open portal to the Flaming Depths, you’ll want to set the brazier about 3 feet away to achieve a similar temperature. You’ll want to shout your second Forlorn Hope at the heat source, leaning close enough to feel the hot breath of R’hllor on your face, but not so close as to singe your eyebrows.

Once the grill or brazier has achieved suitable temperature and sanctity, fetch the wrapped tenderloin from the freezer. Create a Viking funeral ship for it from aluminum foil - bacon grease dripping onto hot flames or coals is not a great thing and could accidentally release fire imps into the environment. Singing lustily (a few sips of Cursed Brew help here), place the foil vessel on the hot grate. If you start to scream, lift your hand off the grill. If you start to howl and gibber, call your friends over for dinner because that’s a sign that this is gonna be awesome.

You’ll want to cook the worm for about 25 minutes or so. Don’t wander off on some side quest adventure during this time, as you’ll want to keep an eye on things. You froze the meat so that the bacon will have enough time to cook and get nice and crispy without overcooking the loin inside. Plus, the cold helped keep the worm from animating and escaping due to the Blackened Stone’s baleful emanations. Still, you’ll want to check the Fleshworm’s core temperature for it to be like 150 or so (FDA says 170, but they don’t have to eat dry pork). If it needs more time, give it more time. If the bacon is getting too crispy for you, you can lower the heat and let it cook a bit longer. If the meat is at temperature but the bacon is not crispy enough for you, heat up and pan on the stove and give it a few tosses there.

Create a new foil coffin for the Fleshworm and let it rest there. The coffin is important as it lets the meat rest - the dread spirit that now inhabits the delicious meatsuit you have made for it is likely tired from its journey. It only takes a few minutes, which is plenty of time for you to huddle in the corner, sobbing at your creation and the nightmare of delicious flavor it represents.

Once the meat is rested and you’ve put yourself back together, move the Fleshworm to a cutting surface. Show it your ritual cooking knife. Let Fleshworm know who is boss by cutting out a small wedge in the end you previously designated as its head. You are free to eat the small triangle of meat and make a wish as you do so. Take a piece of dry spaghetti, snap it up into inch long sections, and jam each section into the now exposed mouth, creating a horrible maw that somehow seems familiar.

Transfer the now complete worm to a serving plate. If you got hold of some applesauce, you can slit the thing’s gullet and spread out some appley goodness as if it was spilled bile.

Serve with Cursed Brew and plaintive wails of ‘WHAT HAVE I DONE?’ Be sure the entire Fleshworm is consumed - if any scrap remains, the unholy thing will regenerate over time and come back to you for revenge.

Cleanup is simple: while maintaining unbroken eye contact with one of your dining companions (or a mirror if you’re a lonely sadsack who just ate like three pounds of pork), simply slowly reach out with your arms and shove everything off the table.

Next Time on DEVOUR THAT: Grampa Crowninshield’s Inedible Rock Ice Cream!