Thank you! I can’t take credit for the chicken wire “cage.” However, the shovel handles and wire loops are all mine!

You do know that there are places that will rent big grills as well as actual mobile barbecue pits that have spits, right? My aunt and uncle rented a grill for a family reunion once where they did a whole pig on a spit, and another time a friend rented a big grill for her wedding.

As for thoughts on kalua pig, well… it’s to die for! I have only made it in the oven, with banana leaves I harvested myself. I did a whole pork butt when I catered a luau themed birthday party for a friend of mine. I salted the heck out of it, sprinkled a few drops of liquid smoke (which is a natural product that one can actually make btw, unlike most truffle oils) and wrapped it tightly in banana leaves. I then put it in a deep roasting pan and roasted it very slowly (I think 250?) all night and half the next day.

When it had been cooking something like 12 hours I finally took it out and checked it. The banana leaves had gone from vibrant green to a very odd tan color and it scared me a little. But when I cut the butcher’s twine and unwrapped those leaves, that thing just sprawled apart in the pan, yet the meat was moist, gelatinous and the most delicious kind of salty-sweet with just a whisper of smokiness. I was supposed to make a different sauce using some of the pan juices, water, vinegar, more salt and more liquid smoke. I didn’t do that. I just skimmed the fat off the pan juices added some apple cider vinegar and used that. Yes, it was salty, but it was perfection when drizzled on the meat because of the gelatin from the connective tissues. Best of all? Little sandwiches made with Hawaiian style rolls dipped in the pan juices.

If you make kalua pig, not only do you serve fresh pineapple as an acidic element, you must make haupia. I think it is usually a side dish at luaus, but some people consider it a dessert. I just like that is, essentially, coconut jello. It’s easy, but your arm will fall off if you don’t have help stirring it. It takes constant stirring for something like 45 minutes and when it’s done the spoon will stand straight up in the pot! A pain, but well worth it. It only has two ingredients: sweetened coconut milk and corn starch. My son bought a robo-stirrer and we’ve been meaning to give it a run for it’s money by making a batch of haupia. My expectations are pretty low. I’ll keep you posted on how well it works out.

Thoughts about the above ground roasting spectacle? YES! People are drawn to it, almost against their will, like moths to a flame! Even more so, I think, when it’s on a spit. I know I’ve stood and watched the pig spin. One thing I always find myself doing is watching a drop stay in place as the pig rolls over and over, waiting and waiting for it to gather enough weight to drop with a hisssss onto the coals. It really fuels the appetite, too! I don’t know if it’s the aroma or the sight of crispy skin, but nearly everyone LOVES a well roasted pig. I can’t think of anything any better, really. A pound (pre-cooked) per person is barely enough, in my experience. There were only about 70 people at the family reunion and we nearly finished a 140 pound (dressed weight) pig. Granted, we were all family and nobody was being “polite” we were, quite literally, pigging out! Some people didn’t eat anything else.

So where are you going now? Someplace fun, with great food, I’ll bet.

That is GENIUS, Toni!

We are holding a pig roast at Potrero Nuevo Farm (with Tunitas Creek Kitchen) in September. Ill keep you posted on the dates!!! Maybe you can come!!

My first paying job (under the table as it was HIGHLY illegal) was working in a butcher shop. My mother was the meat wrapper there and all I really did was clean up the steaks after the band saw, stack them in piles of whatever count they were meant to be wrapped in, and then stamp them with whatever they were. Yes, this was WAY old school, long, LONG before vacuum packaging was available.

After working in various restaurants, bakeries and delis, finally going to culinary school and becoming a chef felt like I’d come full circle. But it REALLY came all the way back to twelve o’clock when I got the gun club job. The club was just a mile down the road from the ranch I grew up on! I could have stood with Daddy’s binoculars on the back porch of my old farm house on stilts and looked across the rice field, corn field and pasture land and seen the gun club. In fact, that is why they hired me.

Once I settled in they loved seeing photos of flooding and high water marks from the 60s. They also loved seeing pictures of me as a little girl on the ranch in places they could still see as they drove by, especially the one of me sitting patiently on the edge of a seemingly empty but flooded rice field with my fishing pole line in the water. Even I have to admit that’s pretty cute and some seriously wishful thinking on my part.

I started reading “Tunie’s” message, but after the first paragraph it was just “blah, blah, blah– SEA KITTENS and SKY PUPPIES!” PETA nonsense to me. I’m not trying to be insensitive here. Nobody is more thankful for the food on the dinner table than farmers because they know how much work goes into food production, and for very little return.

Knowing where your food comes from is important. I do think we will eat less meat out of necessity in the future. Mostly because we won’t be able to afford it with the ever-shrinking middle class and all. That being said, I think most will always eat meat for celebrations. Heck, I got a group of vegans to eat rib roast one year for my birthday! And bacon can convert almost anyone, it is THE gateway meat, after all!

I have no issues with the goings on surrounding your hog becoming pork. Some animals just don’t get into trailers easily, it just is what it is. Anthropomorphizing him and believing that he “knew” what was going to happen is just not reality. Now, he may have known that his old friends got in the trailer and never came back, but he couldn’t know more than that. What really surprised me was that you didn’t save the blood for black sausage, or hardly any of the offal for that matter. Chris Cosentino (and likely Guy Savoy) would be giving you hell for that, you know! But I understand, I’m not big on eating offal, either. However, I sure would have had the trotters removed. Are they even edible when cooked like this?

I appreciate the idea of killing being difficult for a reason. We are omnivorous. Following a higher calling would possibly lead to only copulating to procreate, and that is not as popular as giving up meat. We try for better, but we are animals. Honoring the creature that carried the flesh that we eat SHOULD be important. Driving by fresh road kill in the area that I live makes me a little sad that the flesh will not go on to sustain higher life forms than worms and rodents. There is not a simple answer, nor should there be. We should be more involved in the process of harvesting our food, but most of us are not. Perhaps we should be forced to consume the flesh of those that we vanquish in battle. Being human has its moments of doubt and questioning.

Tunie – What can I say? I agree with you on many different levels and I really appreciate your perspective and voice. I have always struggled with the morality of it – especially when I had to butcher 40 wild game birds a day in Paris not to mention skin and prepare hunted animals from boar to hare.

But I do eat meat although I wouldn’t consider it to be the largest part of my diet so for me there has to be a connection to how the animal is raised and processed. And, I just can’t go back to eating anything raised or processed commercially (industrially). One issue that bothers me today is how we, as a culture, see meat in grocery stores as such an inanimate object – like a condiment or vegetable – not as something special and once living.

I think that the idea of a pig roast as a celebration and special event, which in this case brought a very large rural community of mostly farmers together to celebrate the end of the harvest, was an incredible eye opening experience.

Thanks again for your post….

I’d love to share a few points to consider, and truly with all due respect to your chosen professional focus on meat! It’s just something I am thinking about as well.

First, my thought is that whenever we have to ‘convince’ ourselves to do something, that is an indicator right there. And if we feel bad about it, that’s another indicator, as unfamiliar and illogical as the alternative may seem. But that’s the path of personal growth into the unknown. It requires trust and insight.

To continue, courage was not a factor for this particular pig at all – he was killed very much against his will; and you carefully describe how his resistance was simply disregarded. That is not courage. Courage would be if the pig saw that you were going to die without food, then laid down and died in front of you – that’s how the old tales of Native Americans lost in the wilderness go. Then, they proceeded to use the taste of meat as inspiration to take matters into their own hands, and began killing at will, instead of at need, until it became something they thought they couldn’t live without. Being nomads to begin with, nothing stopped them from choosing a location suitable to an agrarian lifestyle but the addiction to flesh and the ease of procurement was irresistible I guess. And so it goes with people today. Flesh and blood are addictive – the whole vampire trend sort of illustrates that parallel with the current fascination for meat. Everyone is trying to convince themselves it’s ok to kill animals that clearly have strong relationship skills with humans and certainly prefer to live. That’s why commercial meat production took it to a factory level – to avoid dealing with the fact that eating creatures you know and love, and what’s more – know, love and trust YOU – is really difficult. It’s difficult for a reason! Humans do not need meat to live well. Especially 1rst world humans.

From an social anthropological view, I think meat is on it’s way out, personally. This next few years is just it’s last hurraw, a sort of celebration of gratitude and appreciation. Whew, that’s a book.

Thanks for opening up the discussion and sharing your feelings so honestly about it!

In another life I would love to raise adorable furry piglets, but I don’t know if I could stand to do the slaughtering myself.

Craigkite – wow, now there’s a fascinating woman. I studied her when I was pursuing my teaching credential but more for her work with autism and I had completely forgot about her work that radically changed how livestock are cared for and treated in this country. Thanks for this quote!

I was a little cautious about posting this story because my pictures on FaceBook of the entire slaughter seemed to illicit an array of emotional responses – not surprisingly.

But, I think and hope that this is the new food trend (or one that is very old making a full circle): that we know where our food is coming from, that we have a relationship with the producer, and that we strive to feed our community thereby not over farming our land and polluting our waters and soils for the next generation. Industrial pig farms can wipe out whole communities and they often have the money to pay off the lawsuits that little farmers and townspeople bring against them.

Industrial pig farms not only pollute water & food systems but they create a stench that nobody can live around. And they do not provide humane animal husbandry conditions. Pigs are very smart animals. It’s sad to me that people seem to know this, but don’t care, and I hope if nothing else that I can shed some light on the process as it should go not as it is…

PS: your “grassy knoll” location made me thing of JFK.