Pig roast

The guest of honor.

This weekend some good friends invited me to a pig roast in New Hampshire. This was my first experience with whole roast pig. They got a pastured St. Johnsbury pig, which was $1.25 less per pound than the Tamsworth, and was also, according to the butcher, better. I couldn't decide and feel that a side by side tasting is required. Maybe today. Mostly, I just want to eat more pork. My god, was that pig good. It was stuffed with apples and basted with a mixture that included hot sauce, mustard, cider, and a few other things. The fat rendered down to nothing; the fatback was thin and crisp and delicious.

There were probably fifty-sixty people there, including little kids. Despite the fact that people also consumed lots of corn, apples, potato salad, macaroni salad, mozz and tomato salad, cheese and crackers, baked ziti, beans, bread, brownies, four types of cookies, two cakes, at least two large watermelon, piles of blueberries from the stand of bushes on the property, and an ocean of beer and homemade wine, there was only this much pig left at the end of the day:


The remains

I love Italian families. People really eat. I hate parties where people don't eat.

(Yes, the head of the pig is a bit gruesome. This affected my appetite not a whit, though at least one meat-eater was unable to eat her pork. More for the rest of us. I've spared you the Lord of the Flies picture from the end of the evening, when one of the brothers decided to walk around holding the head before his face like a mask. Not that it wasn't funny, though.)